The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (24 page)

R
elief
doused
me like a splash of warm water as we departed Queenstown. I’d never liked the place, and Malvyna’s latest malevolence had left me crinkling with rage and chafing at my need for patience. I couldn’t simply kill her as I had done Ikselian, not with so much of her bloodlight wound through the curse she’d commanded upon Onatos. Killing her would kill him, too.

How could I free Onatos? I saw no better way than to stay safe under the protective wing of Xander Ricknagel, while I bided my time and determined a plan. There had to be an answer somewhere, in all the vast terrain of the Cedna’s knowledge. Only I did not know how to find it.

W
e stayed
at an inn in the city of Engashta en route to Galantia for the Marriage Brokering. The Ricknagels had planned to travel to the High City with the Entila Family—Xander had hoped to have already arranged a betrothal between Sterling and Culan—but as we’d left Entila early, there would be a few extra days for us in Galantia before the Brokering began.

“Mother says I must now participate in the Brokering.” Sterling interrupted my spinning thoughts as we readied for bed at the inn. Our room had two small beds, side by side.

“What does that entail?”

“Mainly dressing up and attending the festivities. There are three parties. At each party, the eligible young men distribute favors. If a young lady receives no favors, she cannot attend the next night’s party. So I must try very hard to get a favor on the first and second nights, Mama says. If I am not invited to the third night, I will not find a husband.”

“Have you even had your blood moon yet?” I had never noticed the girl changing her schedule to accommodate it, and I had never seen any sign of pads or blood in her laundry.

“Blood moon? What’s that?” she asked.

“When your womb bleeds, and you become a woman, ready to take a husband.”

“What do you mean? I can marry at fifteen, that’s the law. What blood?” Her face blanched.

I sighed. “When a girl turns into a woman, she bleeds from her womb. This means she is capable of bearing young. In Gante, it means she may take a mate.”

“How animalistic,” she said, her eyes wide. “Does it only happen to Ganteans?”

“Of course not. It happens to every woman.”

Panic flickered across her face. “How will I know when it happens to me? Does the blood come—outside of the body?”

“It does.” It shocked me that no one had bothered to explain this to her before. “From between your legs, where a baby comes from as well.” I explained how I took care of myself during the blood moon to Sterling. She was oddly sheltered, kept in an almost criminal ignorance on account of her face.

O
ther cities change
; buildings rise or fall, new facades spring up, streets widen or narrow as traffic dictates. Not so in Galantia. Down to the cobbles of its roads, it looked the same as when I’d arrived young and optimistic with Onatos so many years ago. The Ricknagels were to stay at the Crystal Palace itself, a show of honor for an important family. Upon our arrival, Xander followed King Mydon into a private conference, where I assumed they discussed plans for a marriage between Stesichore and Costas Galatien. Sterling had filled my ears with talk of Stesichore’s chances of becoming the next royal princess on our way to the city.

Sterling and I were shuffled off to our rooms in the east wing of the Palace. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh at fate’s turns as I walked into the room that had been prepared for me as Sterling’s handmaiden. Last time I’d been in the Galatien Palace, I’d been housed underground in the women’s cell in the prison. Time had changed me, if not Galantia.

Ricknagel had hinted to me on our journey south from Queenstown that he would be too busy maneuvering on Stesichore’s behalf to do much for Sterling at the Brokering, implying that if Sterling was to find a husband, she would have to do it with whatever assistance I could muster. I had resolved to help the girl, though the brewing storm inside my mind—Onatos, Malvyna, that terrible, complicated enchantment—took most of my attention.

It had been drilled into my head long ago that magic was wasteful, and if a ritual was not vital, absolutely vital, I should not do it. The fearful Gantean Elders had handed down this sentiment, and I could not entirely shake it. But, after seeing the curse upon Onatos, I had questions, and the only answers would be found in the magical knowledge that lived behind the black, dangerous door in my head.

The Hinge had not been well maintained these past years—with no one in Gante feeding it at the source, its power wavered. I felt the shifts in my blood, and though I made my offerings to whatever earth or sea I had to hand—the hot earth of Vorisipor or the loam soil of the Ricknagel rose garden—the tendrils of magic that connected me to the Hinge had grown fainter over the years.

Despite my fears for the Hinge’s strength, Lethemian magic appeared unaffected. I had no explanation for this, and I wondered if Lethemian magic might offer a better way to cure Onatos’s curse. But Onatos had proclaimed it incurable. I was left to my own devices.

The second day after we arrived in Galantia, after Sterling departed to consult with her mother about her dresses for the Brokering, I used the letter opener from the desk in the palace guest room to pierce my wrist. I collected my blood in a white porcelain teacup left over from the morning tray.

My bloodletting thinned the veil between layers. In Yaqi, my blood became my bloodlight: black, viscous, ever-changing. It coiled around me.

I could call Skeleton Woman into my presence, though I never had, for I feared her. She had told me long ago, when I was made Cedna, that she did not want me to be her fleshly representative. She had cursed me:
we do not love you
.

For Onatos, I could face her. As I called her Gantean name, a word that can only be said, never written, Skeleton Woman emerged, her white hair flying unbound around her bone-face and wide grimace. She whispered, “So long you have been apart from us. We have been poorly nourished. Our power grows weak. We suffer. Gante suffers.”

“Gante suffers at the hands of Malvyna Entila,” I said. “I would ask your help in removing her.”

“You wish to make tunixajiq? To send a body and its blood to us? A strong one?” Her rasping voice grew eager.

“I would, but her bloodlight is held by magic here in Ijiq,” I explained. “If I give all her bloodlight to the Hinge, I worry that the magic here will fail, and it will hurt others if it does.” Onatos and Malvyna’s bloodlights were so thoroughly tangled in that enchantment. “I would make tunixajiq with her, but I wish to preserve some bloodlight here, in Ijiq, even after she is gone. Enough to sustain the ung-aneraqs she has made. Is this possible?”

Skeleton Woman rustled her multicolored skirts that glittered like Hinge Crystal, while her white bloodlight spun around me. “You must send this woman to the Hinge. If you do as I say, she will feed it as she dies, and her bloodlight will then fade gently from the world, leaving only the bits of it that exist in ung-aneraqs and bloodcords. There will be no harm to others. Is this the magic you seek?”

“How?” I demanded. “How does it work?” Skeleton Woman could be a trickster; I did not fully trust her advice. She could speak with the Hinge’s hunger.

“You must spill blood, yours and another’s, into your waters. You must command your waters to take her flesh into them. Your waters will bring her to me, to the Hinge. They will take her from Ijiq without a trace, but you will be much weakened by this magic. You will need this.” She held out a perfect blackstone ulio, more perfect than any I had ever seen or made. Its curving edge gleamed; its bone handle echoed the black blade’s sweep.

“Thank you.” The heavy weight of the ulio fell into my hands. “Thank you.”

The effects of the magic faded, and the ulio I held remained the only trace of the ritual as I came back to myself, standing on the guest room balcony with a shattered tea cup and blood pooled at my feet.

T
he evening
of the first Brokering party had arrived. Sterling would wear a jewel-adorned, yellow gown. I helped her into it, fully distracted, pondering Skeleton Woman’s cryptic advice and how I might use it if I encountered Malvyna Entila at the Brokering party.

“You look nice in yellow,” I said, surprised her mother had chosen this dress for her. Usually Lady Ricknagel deliberately gave Sterling unbecoming attire.

“It’s the color of my aetherlight,” she said. “Traditionally, one wears the color of one’s aetherlight to the first Brokering party. They used to believe that only certain colors were compatible, so it was thought a good way to help people make the right match. You must wear your color, too, Serafina.”

I pulled the only black dress I had brought from the trunk.

Sterling gasped. “Oh, Serafina. Your aetherlight is black?” She sounded appalled. “I’ve never heard of such a thing! You must wear something to relieve the severity. Here, I have a capelet.” She dug around in her own trunk and threw the garment at me. I donned it to please her, but in truth, I did not care if I looked severe.

We entered the grand Galatien ballroom—a room like nothing I’d ever seen, with soaring ceilings, white marble floors, and a massive golden clock built into the wall high above us. Already a crowd flurried through the enormous room. Sterling shrank back against me. I pushed her forward.

“Come now, Sterling, this is no time to be shy,” I said.

“Oh, I’m a terrible dancer. No one will give me a favor. No one will ask me to dance. This is hopeless!”

If Sterling did not receive a favor at this first party, she would not be welcome to attend the following evening. One of my goals for the evening was to secure a favor for Sterling. It didn’t matter to me who gave it to her, so long as she got one and was not left out of the subsequent parties.

I sat with Sterling at a table. Her glum gaze followed her sister around the room, like everyone else’s. Stesichore Ricknagel shimmered, one of the brightest stars in the ballroom. Attentive young men surrounded her. Only Malvyna Entila drew my gaze more. She wore a daring sheath of purple with a sheer green cape edged with feathers, the colors painful reminders of those bloodlight vines I’d seen trapping my Onatos. Malvyna sat in a circle of fawning men, some of them half her age.

“Do you know any of the young men?” I asked Sterling. If Sterling had an interest in one of these ridiculous creatures, then I’d drag him to her side by his hair and glare him into handing over his favor. I needed to focus on other matters.

“Not really,” she murmured. The sugar egg she was holding broke apart. She dropped the treat onto her plate and folded her hands.

“Are there any you find appealing?” I sipped the wine I’d been handed upon entry. The Galatiens knew how to throw a party: the wine, the food, the fashion, the music, everything was perfect, though all I wanted was to distract Sterling with a boy and get closer to Malvyna. Skeleton Woman’s ulio sat in my gown’s pocket, warming my thigh like a lover’s caress.

“Prince Costas is the most handsome,” Sterling said, jutting her chin in his direction.

I followed her gaze to the High Prince. Costas, King Mydon’s son, was almost luminous. He wore all white. A Cedna’s intuition doubted he had such pure bloodlight. Obviously not everyone wore his bloodlight color to the first party.

“He is too old for you,” I remonstrated, though of course Lethemians made stranger matches all the time.

“Stesi would murder me if I dared to even speak with him.”

“Isn’t there someone else?”

Sterling had mentioned a few names during our southward travels, though I had not kept strict reign on my attention when she spoke of marital matters.

“Lord Dario Powdon is exactly the same age as me.”

“Is he here?” I asked.

Sterling cocked her head. “Over there.”

The boy she’d pointed out looked less formed and less polished than the Galatien prince, and not as handsome. No matter. Any boy would do. “I’ll fetch him,” I said.

Sterling spluttered behind me.

As I moved through the crowd, the first dance began. Only Prince Costas and his chosen partner took part in this one. Costas Galatien moved gracefully across the floor in a precise pattern, the girl in his arms scrambling to keep up with him. Halfway to Lord Dario Powdon, I froze. I recognized that girl dancing with the prince.

Ghilene.
I studied the girl closer than I ever had in Queenstown. She looked so much like her mother that I could barely find traces of Onatos. Possibly her skin was a touch paler than Malvyna’s; possibly her bones a little more delicate?

I hated her. I hated her with a sudden, chilling envy that iced my blood. Malvyna had always received the gifts I had been denied—to raise her daughter, to treasure her, to see her grow. Malvyna had taken so much from me: my country, my lover, and now this. The girl taunted me across the dance floor, making me think of the daughter I had never known.

I forced myself to move towards the boy for Sterling. I bowed stiffly. “My charge, Sterling Ricknagel, needs a dancing partner,” I said, glowering at him. If he refused, the thin shreds of restraint that held me in check would snap.

The youth gazed up at me in surprise. “Sterling Ricknagel? I’ve never met her. I’ll dance,” he acquiesced. “But I don’t do the Valta. It’s too embarrassing to endure.”

I had no idea what he meant, but I grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him towards Sterling. The music changed and the dance floor flooded with couples as we made our way back to Sterling’s table.

“Lord Dario Powdon, meet Lady Sterling Ricknagel,” I announced into the awkward silence as the two youths stared at each other. Poor Sterling flushed, making the mark on her face stand out more than usual. She stood and curtsied with a miserable air.

Lord Dario tried not to look at her face. “You are Lady Stesichore’s sister?” he asked, gazing over her shoulder at the dance floor.

“Yes,” Sterling replied. “But she is far—”