Текст книги "The wolf and the crown of blood"

Автор книги: Elizabeth May

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

9

BRYONY

MY BEDROOM DOOR bursts open.

A jolt goes through me as Theodora storms in, coppery curls all mussed, dark circles under her eyes. She heads for my armoire and starts flinging drawers wide.

“On your feet, Bry. We need to get you dressed. I’ve been up all night trying to menace and bribe someone in the palace to drive us to the temple without alerting Uncle.” She pulls out a heap of clothes. “This place is full of spineless idiots.”

I push myself up on my elbows. “Theo, what—”

“After what happened last night, I don’t trust Idris with your safety.” She dumps the bundle of fabric on my mattress, already turning to rummage through another drawer. “I’ll threaten the Head Oracle into contacting Alexios and negotiate with him myself.”

I shiver as I swing my legs over the side of the bed and—Wait. Different nightgown. Gray silk, little vine pattern. When did I put this on?

A dream returns in snatches—those amber eyes, hot skin beneath my palms, lips against my ear.

Where do you want me? Where would you like to sink in your claws and teeth and tear?

Stupid. If the Wolf had been in my room, he’d have slit my throat and whistled while the blood pooled.

“Bry.” Theodora’s sharp voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “Get that nightgown off. We need to move.”

I scramble to tug the shift off. Theodora lobs a chemise at me, followed by stockings. I yank them on, my hands trembling so badly I can barely work the buttons.

“How do you know Alexios will even bother to bargain?”

“He did it with Amalthea, didn’t he? I’ll be convincing.” She spins me around and tugs a soft muslin dress over my head. “I’ve seen an Enforcer come to collect. I won’t let that happen to you.”

My breath catches. I never spoke with Theo about that day in the palace woods two years ago—how quickly the Wolf killed. The way his power had pressed down on me. His words, low and intent.

Don’t ever give me a reason to come for you.

I swallow past the sudden dryness in my mouth. “Which did you see? The Wolf?”

“The Blade. The one without proper wings. His are like… living shadow spilling down his back.” She laces up my bodice, fingers deft. “I saw him when Aldgate stopped tithing and Uncle abandoned us. I went to speak with the village elders and remind them that nowhere is too isolated for a god’s notice. A lesson they all learned.”

“He killed them?”

“Yes. Every single one.” A shudder rolls through her. “By the time I reached the village, he was standing on a pile of corpses admiring his handiwork. I’ve never seen that much death.”

Watching the Wolf kill an oathbreaker was bad enough. I’ve heard his brother is worse. The Blade isn’t known for efficient kills; he just shows up for a massacre and makes it as bloody and brutal as possible.

“You spoke to him?” I ask, swallowing hard.

“You might say that. I got up in his face and insulted him.”

A strangled laugh escapes me. “Theo, you didn’t!”

“What was he going to do? Killing an Anchor breaks the Accords, and even an immortal attack dog has limits.”

Before I can respond, heavy footsteps thunder down the corridor. A moment later, Idris’ broad frame fills the doorway, and he scowls as he takes in my half-laced gown. “Whatever you’re planning, forget it.”

“I’m taking her to the temple myself,” Theodora tells him, finishing with my laces. “Right now, I don’t trust you to navigate your way off a toilet, much less with Bryony’s safety.”

Idris glares at her. “You take one step toward those gates with her, and I’ll have you dragged back by the hair.” He jerks his head at me. “Let’s go, Bryony.”

“Let her put shoes on,” Theodora snaps. “And don’t manhandle her in front of the servants. Grant her that small dignity.”

“Dignity?” He stalks to my dressing room, voice rising to a bellow. “She pissed that away the moment she bared her traitor’s brand to half the empire’s nobles and every royal family from here to the Southern Reaches.”

Idris storms out with a pair of my slippers. He chucks them at my feet, lip curled in a sneer. “Put those on.”

I slip into the shoes and tie up the ribbons.

Theodora grabs a cloak, settles it over my shoulders, and gently works the clasps. “Let me ride with Bryony. She shouldn’t be alone for this.”

Alone with you, she means.

“Absolutely not. Stay behind and keep the nobles calm.”

“You honestly expect me to play hostess after they all saw their princess show off an oathbreaker’s mark?”

“You’re a clever girl, Theodora. If those lords give you trouble, do what you always do and fuck them into compliance.”

Idris seizes my arm and hauls me toward the door. Panic claws up my throat. I twist around, searching for Theo’s face. She looks at me—angry, scared, her hands shaking.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too.”

Idris yanks me away.

The servants won’t look at me. As my uncle drags me down the palace colonnade, everyone averts their eyes as if the sight of an oathbreaker might taint them. A few of the younger maids turn their backs.

Well. Guess I’m poison.

It’s funny, in a bleak sort of way. These same people used to fall all over themselves for a scrap of the Princess of the Blood’s attention, and now they avoid me like I’m a plague carrier. Typical. Once a god judges you, everyone’s quick to throw you to the wolves.

“Keep up,” Idris barks, tugging at my arm.

My teeth grind together, but I lengthen my stride. He wrenches the carriage door open, shoves me inside, and clambers in after me.

The interior presses in from all sides. My chest constricts. Some distant part of my mind registers the first stirrings of panic.

“Stop that,” Idris says sharply.

I blink. “Stop what?”

“The dramatics. There’s no use for it.”

Right. Silly me. How dare I have an inconvenient feeling about the Eternal completely screwing me over.

“Let’s go!” Idris bangs twice on the roof.

With a sudden lurch and a grinding of wheels, the carriage moves over the cobblestones. I watch the palace walls slide past, the ground still littered with crushed flower petals and muddy ribbons from my ruined wedding. What a waste.

Idris folds his arms and leans back, tapping the toe of his boot against the floorboards in a restless beat as the carriage rattles through the streets. Despite the early morning, crowds have already amassed along our route.

Princess Bryony! Princess!

“What if Alexios doesn’t agree to undo my mark?” I ask, keeping my face hidden behind the curtain.

Idris lets out a rough sigh. “We’ll handle it, whatever it takes. The empire is bigger than one girl’s mistakes.”

My mistakes?

“I’m being punished for your failures,” I say.

And there it is. That look. The one that says he’d like nothing more than to wrap his hands around my neck and squeeze until I stop making noise.

“I don’t want to discuss this with you, Bryony. Clearly, the Eternal thinks you hold some responsibility.”

“Theo tried warning you, but you didn’t listen. You never listen. You’re always too busy pouring more wine down your throat.”

A muscle flickers in his jaw. “You and your sister have no idea what I do for the Accords. How many dead Devaliants do you think I’ve had to arrange? How many bodies I’ve dressed and posed so our citizens don’t see our family’s decline?”

I flinch, my breath too quick and shallow.

“If you knew how many lies I’ve told, how much shit I’ve eaten to keep up the front that we’re just a tragedy-prone family…” His lips twist as he gestures to the crowds along the road. “You can’t hold an empire if they all know you’re rotting.”

I flash back to that terrible morning in the forest when they discovered Father’s body. Idris was pale, his hands shaking as he brushed my hair from my face.

Don’t look, he’d said.

He’d seemed… small. Diminished. And beneath the shock, there’d been a flicker of something bleak and resigned.

Take her inside, he’d ordered my sister, his voice distant. And don’t let her see.

The court had whispered. What had caused Emperor Titus’ sad end? They theorized, of course. Ugly rumors about his mental decline and even uglier whispers that maybe Idris had killed his brother for power.

My uncle acted quickly. A tragic hunting accident, he’d told the broadsheets. The emperor’s horse had spooked and thrown him against a tree. If people speculated after that, they did so privately. But in public, Luceni had accepted it as another Devaliant tragedy.

The shouting crowd draws my attention. The guards line the road, pushing everyone back.

Princess Bryony! Princess!

I force a smile and wave. A father hoists his daughter on his shoulders for a better look, and I blow her a kiss. It’s what Theodora would advise. Act normal. Don’t let them think anything is wrong.

Idris gives a bitter chuckle. “Even with your life going to shit, you still show up for them. That’s why they love you. Odessa had that gift, too, remember? That ability to wrap people around her finger.”

Tears sting my eyes. It’s been a year since Idris’ daughter stepped off the palace balcony.

“I’m showing them we care,” I say. “You might want to try it sometime. Wouldn’t your daughter want you to?”

His lips flatten. “You don’t know what it’s like to outlive your child and lie about her death. So spare me the accusations and the judgment. I’ve done more than enough. Maybe you should have done less.”

“I never asked for them to love me.”

A silence descends between us, punctuated by the clatter of wheels and the shouts from outside. Then Idris sighs. “That’s the edge we walk, isn’t it? Give them nothing, and they’ll despise you. Give them everything, and they’ll destroy you. Either way, we bleed. The most we can hope for is a cut that kills us quickly.”

He reaches out to tap my knee. As if that awkward touch can somehow encompass the breadth and depth of what we don’t say. All the hollow spaces the dead leave behind.

Our driver stops the horses at the base of the temple steps. Idris climbs out and takes my hand, half dragging me inside. It’s still too early for tithes to begin, and the inner sanctum is empty. The only sounds are the rasp of my exhales, the erratic thud of my pulse, the echo of our footsteps.

“Just breathe,” Idris mutters.

He leads me down the corridor, and we duck through a low doorway into a cramped room cluttered with old books and wingback chairs. The space is windowless, lit only by guttering candles. The Head Oracle is reading at a table, face hidden by the black veil.

“That girl is not welcome again in this temple,” she says, snapping the book shut. Her veil flutters with an agitated breath. “Get out.”

Idris grips my arm harder as if to prevent me from bolting. “I’m your emperor. When I give you a command, you do it. I want you to contact Alexios about my niece’s mark.”

Not so much as a twitch from the Oracle. “Sit.” I can’t tell who she’s addressing until she crooks a finger in my direction. “Here. Now.”

I sink into the chair.

The Oracle seizes my wrist and yanks my arm closer. I’m frozen, watching as she traces her finger over the ugly gash cutting Alexios’ mark in half. Inspecting her god’s handiwork.

And then I feel it—a foreign presence slithering into my mind. The Oracle. She shoves past my flimsy mental walls like they’re nothing.

Memories flash: the child asking for my blessing, the crowds outside the palace gates, the offerings they threw at my feet instead of visiting the temple. Echoing chants, the roar of blood in my ears. Smothering. Hungry. All those voices calling my name. Then—

Emptiness. Alone in my head again, the connection severed.

The Oracle hums, a slow, considering noise. Speaking with Alexios, probably. Figuring out exactly how worthless I am to him now.

“Well?” Idris taps his fingers against his thigh. “Can it be undone?”

She shakes her head. “No. Once Eternal Alexios makes a judgment, he won’t be swayed. Your niece’s fate was sealed the moment the masses decided a Princess of the Blood was more deserving of their devotion. Her life belongs to him. It always has.”

Her words knock the wind out of me. I’ve been abandoned by the god who was supposed to protect me. The god my family has served for generations. The god I bled and died for. I knew, of course. But hearing it out loud is a different thing entirely.

“There has to be something.” Idris paces the room. “A tithe. A sacrifice. Tell him to name his price.”

The Oracle slaps her palm against the table, rattling the candlesticks. “I’m not one of your courtiers or bootlicking lords, so don’t presume to command me. I’m the Head Oracle of Hellevig. My bloodline traces to an Eternal who walked these realms before Alexios drew breath.”

“Killing her would destabilize the city,” he says, running his hands through his hair. “The people adore her—they’d riot in the streets!”

“Gods grow weary of empires.” The Oracle shrugs. “They rise, they fall. Alexios will be alive long after your pitiful empire is dust and memory.”

I can’t breathe. My lungs won’t work. I can barely focus on their words through the roar of my heartbeat.

Idris pauses, giving me a considering look. “He’ll accept Bryony’s death as recompense?” he asks the Oracle, keeping his stare on me. “Swear it.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll do more than accept it. He might even reward you for such a display of devotion. Slide the knife in, and he’ll measure your faith in the spill of her blood.”

No. No, no, no.

The truth of it settles like a stone in my gut. The Wolf’s bargain, my promised end—all of it will be snatched away, and my uncle will do the job. He won’t know how to make it painless, how to make it quick.

Something wild thrashes in my chest, battering my ribs. I need to move. Now.

I lurch out of my chair and rush out of the room.

“Bryony.”

My slippers skid as I careen down the twisting halls. I have no idea where I’m going, just away, away, away—

The sanctum opens up ahead, and I stumble in, knees hitting the marble floor as my body revolts. I heave out the contents of my stomach behind the altar.

Footsteps sound at my back. Idris wrenches me up by the elbow, fingers digging in. “Done with your tantrum?”

I twist against his grip. “Don’t touch me.”

“You think running will change anything?”

“Let. Go.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

He shoves me. I slam into the altar stone and go down hard, my skull cracking against the floor. Pain explodes behind my eyes—blinding, vicious.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Look what you made me do.” His voice comes from far away as his hands slide under me. “Why can’t you ever make things easy? Always fighting. Always causing problems.”

He lifts me, and my head lolls against his chest as he carries me.

I must lose consciousness, because when I open my eyes again, we’re in the carriage, and it’s moving. My head throbs. I touch my temple, and my fingers come away red.

“Where—” My tongue feels thick. I blink away the darkness overwhelming my sight. “Are we going to the palace?”

Idris doesn’t answer right away, his focus on some distant point out the window. When he finally speaks, his voice is flat. Cold. “We’re going up the Duehavn.”

Five little words that tighten around my throat like a noose.

*   *   *

The Duehavn Ridge is a crooked spine of rock and snow—a landscape pared down to its rawest elements. On the high slopes, everything is still. Quiet. The peaks glitter in the afternoon light, the low-angled sun catching on the icy crags. Nothing green softens its harsh edges. Nothing lives, nothing thrives. It’s the kind of place where things end.

A fitting backdrop for what’s coming.

I press my forehead to the window. Maybe if I close them, this will all melt away and reveal itself to be another resurrection nightmare dredged up from the silt of memory and trauma. Something I imagined after hitting my head on the temple floor. But the cut stopped bleeding thirty minutes ago, and I’m wide awake now.

My fingertips find the crook of my elbow, tracing the upraised lines carved into my flesh.

One notch. Breathe.

Two notches. I feel the velvet seat beneath me. Hear the rattle of the wheels.

Three. My name is Bryony Devaliant.

Four. I’m on the Duehavn Ridge, and my uncle is planning to kill me.

Five. Real.

Still here. Still rattling up the road to my murder.

I suck in a shaking breath. The air in the carriage feels too thick, and I want out, out, out—

There’s a shimmer in my periphery—the Shroud catching the sunlight. It hangs above the peaks, a veil of starlight that ripples and dances like a living thing.

Colors bloom over its surface in pinks and shimmering golds, indigo and red, bleeding into each other across the snowy slopes. The mountain glitters everywhere the light touches.

“Cruel, isn’t it?” I murmur. “How something so exquisite can demand such a brutal price.”

Idris’ lips press together in a grimace. “The gods’ creations often do.”

Nausea grips my stomach. I swallow it down and meet his eyes. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you? What the Oracle said.”

“For Vartena.”

Two words. As if they encompass the beginning and end of all things.

I choke back a bitter laugh. Of course he’s going to do it. The Eternal’s favor is worth a hundred oathbreaking princesses. A thousand. To him, I’m less than nothing, just a carcass to be dumped in some shallow grave. Another doomed woman murdered and discarded.

Murdered.

It feels important to name it. To acknowledge the truth of what’s about to happen.

The rage is sudden. Incandescent. It fills my head with a roaring static, narrowing everything down to the drum of my pulse, to my spiraling thoughts. What has Vartena given me? Nothing but a life spent shackled to the altar. I think of every cut, every dagger shoved into me at the Eternal’s command. And for what?

My fingers curl into fists. What would happen if I let all this fury explode out of me for once? If I turned on everyone, made them bleed the way they make me bleed?

I think about the Wolf in the forest clearing. Those amber eyes searing into mine, bright with a vicious sort of interest. At least he was honest about his work. At least he was quick.

Treat me like an equal.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d rather die by the Wolf’s hand than yours.” I stand, steadying myself against the seat, and pound against the roof. “Stop the carriage!” I shout to the driver.

“Sit down, Bryony.”

“I said stop.”

“And I said sit.”

Fuck this.

The carriage slows just enough. I wrench at the door handle and jump onto the road, the sharp rocks skittering under my slippers.

Idris grabs me before I can take a step. I lash out with my fist and hit something soft. He grunts, but his grip on my arm tightens, bruising now.

“Let go!” I thrash. “Get off me, you miserable bastard—”

He slams me into the dirt, his weight pinning me down and driving the air out of my lungs until I’m gasping. He shoves his knee into my sternum.

“Get off me.”

I buck, putting every scrap of my strength behind it. Clawing at everything in reach. But Idris only pushes his knee harder and wraps a hand around my throat, squeezing, cutting off my air until bright sparks swarm my vision. Until that roaring static drowns out everything else.

Movement catches my eye. The driver. He’s watching us with his mouth hanging open as if he’s uncertain whether to intervene.

“Get back to the carriage,” Idris tells the other man without looking away from me. His thumb presses into my windpipe. “This girl is an oathbreaker.”

The driver’s mouth snaps shut. He looks at me again, and I see it—the moment he decides I’m not worth it. I’m nothing. He turns and walks to his seat like I’m not dying ten feet away.

Abandoning me to my fate.

“Please,” I rasp to Idris. Grasping, desperate. I force the words out through my narrowing airway. “Please, just let me—”

“No.” Idris’ free hand moves to his coat, and he draws out his jeweled dagger. “The Eternal wants you dead, and you heard the Oracle. Better I do this myself before he sets his sights on me.”

I bare my teeth. The fury inside me lunges against my ribs. “Fuck the Eternal. Fuck Vartena, and fuck you.”

He meets my gaze. Holds it.

And then he sinks the blade into my stomach.

He plunges the weapon in again and again, grunting with effort. It happens so fast. I don’t even feel it when he twists and rips the blade free one last time. Everything is so numb, so cold. I taste blood.

Through the black haze coating my vision, I see him crouched over me, silhouetted against the sun.

“I’d take you back for a pyre,” he says, wiping the knife clean on his pants, “but I’d rather not incite a riot on top of everything else.”

His fingers twist in the ruined tatters of my gown. With a few brutal slices, he cuts the blood-soaked fabric away. Leaving me in nothing but my cloak, naked and splayed open like an offering.

“But this will have to do for proof.” He straightens and stares down at me again, clutching that bloodied dress. “I’ll make it a good story, Bryony. I’ll say you were brave. That you didn’t beg when the Wolf came for you.”

His jaw tics, and for a moment, he almost looks sorry.

Almost.

Then he climbs into the carriage and leaves me to bleed out in the dirt.

Memories flicker.

I’m an infant, receiving my first drop of Alexios’ blood in the temple to form the Claim that binds me to him.

Five, when the childhood fingerpricks on the altar change to the dagger in my chest.

Sixteen, when I cut notches into my skin after an anchoring ceremony makes me feel so untethered and adrift that I lose grip on what’s real.

Nineteen, watching Idris drag my father’s body out of the palace woods.

Twenty, when he stumbles into my bedchamber, reeking of wine. “Odessa fell. We’ll tell them it was an accident. Off the Celestine Tower.”

Twenty-one, the last time I die.

I’m ageless as I sink into my memories. They layer over each other: every knife’s sting, every death, every resurrection. Every time I counted my five notches and understood this was all real. An eternity compressed behind my eyes, played out again and again and again.

Not the death I bargained for. But then, I suppose that was another lie I told myself. A sacrifice, bartering for dignity like a starving dog groveling for table scraps. Begging for the right to choose, even if the only choice was in how I met the knife.

We’re all just walking corpses in different stages of decay, the Wolf had said. The only difference is how much of the world we take with us when we finally lie down.

Everything hurts, and at the same time, nothing does. Ice and fire, a strange, floating numbness spreading through me as my surroundings go soft and gray at the edges.

There are worse ends, maybe. Crueler ones.

But as the Void reaches up to claim me, I think this is a particular kind of cruelty, too.

To be left to the dark and the cold. Alone and unmourned.

Already forgotten.

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