Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"

Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Stop.” The word landed like a punch. I whipped my head toward Theodore and his burning gaze. “You are so determined to believe you are some dark harbinger, some monster. I cannot believe—I refuse to believe that knowing you, that binding myself to you—” He swallowed hard. “That… that caring for you could possibly be the cause of my ruination. But if you are to devastate me, then let it be completely. Lay waste to me and everything that’s mine. A life without you in it is not one I wish to lead.”

I held his impassioned gaze, my heart swelling and sinking at once. Words knotted on my tongue. “Think of what you are asking of me, Theodore,” I finally managed, my voice raw. “The people who would suffer if we stayed bound. The cost of it for your kingdom. I can’t fathom it.”

“I don’t have the solution yet. I don’t know—” He shook his head and gave me a crushing look of desperation. “Do you think we are fated to be as we always have been? You, blighted by fear, and me, devoutly, miserably dutiful. We were both fading away.” He crossed the space between us. “You have shone a light on me. You made me feel fury and terror and joy and longing. How do I curl myself back into the darkness after being so alive?”

My throat clamped around tears. Something cold and hard began to spread through my chest. Perhaps it was armor growing around my heart, or perhaps it was my heart itself, shriveling, calcifying, because I understood clearly what I had to do. And I knew just how awful it would be.

I took in his disheveled appearance, his waving hair that looked very much like my fingers had run through it all night. He did not resemble the untouchable king I’d first met. No, I had peeled back his defenses, and he had hardly put up a fight.

“We should hurry,” I finally managed. “Be sure to wear your crown.”

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Lachlan and Agatha had not been in the hall when we emerged, and I thanked the bloody Gods. My wine-hued gown was wrinkled from lying in a heap on the floor all night. My hair was wild and loose down my back, and the severing draught in my pocket bumped against my thigh as I hurried along beside Theodore.

We reached the stairs that led down into the entry hall. “I should walk behind you.” Theodore stopped hard, affronted. “I’m worried enough about the empress seeing me trail you, never mind me walking at your side. I have a feeling about her… I think she knows who I am.”

His brow quirked. “Why would you think that?”

“I’ll tell you everything when the ritual is over.” I gestured toward the stairs. “After you.”

With the Great Gods’ statues looming overhead, and a deprecating look on his face, he started down the stairs. I kept ten paces behind. The sounds of the palace rose up around us. There were bustling servants and trooping soldiers and courtiers draped in jewels and finery. They moved about the hall in lovely bunches that reminded me of spring bouquets. Theodore reached the bottom of the stairs and lingered, looking up at me with scintillant eyes.

I shook my head at him. “This defeats the purpose.”

“I don’t want you behind me,” he said, in a low and too-fond voice. “I want you at my side.” Some kingly defiance straightened his spine. It told me he would not be bent by rules that displeased him. He would not be ordered to give me up by a council that he himself had appointed.

I blew out a resigned breath and his gaze fell longingly to my lips.

“You’re very beautiful.” His voice was a quiet rumble.

“You’re very foolish.” I glanced around us, remembering Lachlan’s warning to be discreet, then tried to smooth the deep creases in my skirt. “I look like I’ve been scooped up from the wildlands.”

He nodded his agreement. “Even so.” He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. “It’s best to keep you like this, I think,” he said, as he led us toward the door to the garden. His gaze smoldered as it skipped over my hair, my mouth, the scoop of my neckline. “If I am made a fool by you like this, I’d be incapacitated to see you dressed as you should be.”

His attention forced a smile to my lips. “And how should I be dressed?”

“In a crown.” He held the door open and looked down at me. “Made with stones the color of honey to match your eyes.”

My heart quickened, even as I realized I did not want to be a queen. I did not want the neck-breaking weight of a crown—not as my father’s heir, nor my mother’s. I wanted to tuck far away from councils and wars and frivolity for something still and quiet and safe.

But perhaps, in another place and time, at Theodore’s side, I could bear it.

A cool mist swirled over the garden, dampening the bright blooms. It turned the paver stones slick beneath my slippers. A short path led us to a run of wooden stairs that dropped straight to the socked-in beach. Lachlan and Agatha stood away from the waves, speaking closely with Eftan. The chancellor looked particularly dour this morning, his hands clasped behind his back in balled-up fists. When he saw me on Theodore’s arm, his mood somehow darkened further, but Agatha’s eyes lit up.

She rushed to my side and took my hand, tugging me closer to the water. A small group of robed Obelian women huddled off to the side, preparing for their ceremony. “I’m so sorry.” Agatha held my hand tight. “I tore into Lachlan for barging in on you two like that. I’ll never forgive him for suggesting the council vote on your severance.” She stared out at the cresting waves, her look sober and dark. “You can’t let Lachlan decide for you. You have to make your own choice.”

I watched the water too. I could feel it breathe and pulse, a mirror of my own body’s rhythms. I guessed it was a mirror to Eusia’s too, wherever her split, decrepit carcass might be. “I understand Lachlan’s frustrations,” I said. “And the weight all this has put on him. Please, don’t let it topple what you two are trying to rebuild.”

She let go of my hand and scoffed. “It’s already toppled.” Her gaze was vacuous as she peered at him across the sand. “No. That gives the impression that it can be rebuilt yet again. It’s a heap of ash that sits between us, I think.” A gust tousled her curls, and she brushed them back with a sad smile on her lips. “We were a long time apart. We used to be complementary shapes, but now we don’t quite fit.”

An indescribable sorrow overtook me. “But you still love him?”

“Yes. I love him.” She swiped quickly at her cheek, at the tear she’d let slip her guard. She looped her arm through mine and squeezed. “That’s the worst of it.”

“Then keep trying.” I wasn’t sure if it was sound advice or not, but I wanted her to have what I couldn’t. “Perhaps you’re trying to make things look the way they used to, but you are different people now. You need time to relearn, to explore what you have each become.”

Agatha looked at me with teary, blinking eyes. “All right.” She gave me a grateful half smile and I could see a prickling of hope in her look. “That’s enough of that.”

I peeked over my shoulder to see if the ceremony was to begin, but the Obelians still rifled through an array of small wooden boxes.

My breath hitched when I realized one of the women among them was Princess Halla. She and the two others, her ladies-in-waiting, wore identical robes in a light, fleshy pink. Halla’s pale hair hung straight and unadorned, slipping around her shoulders in the breeze. Her angular cheeks were without any rouge, and her lips lacked their usual petal-pink coloring too. When she turned, I stifled a jolt. From her neck to her hem hung a deep red sash the precise color of blood.

The effect was so stark, so jarring, that I had to fight to smooth my features. I could only think of the empress’s story of the night the Nels had been slain. Sliced open from nape to groin, bowels spilling to the rug, no doubt by one of King Nemea’s men. All so that he might snatch some jewels. It had the mark of him—of his contemptible, craven scheming.

I leaned toward Agatha. “Where is the empress?”

She gave me a troubled look. “She told Lachlan she refused to speak to or be around the king until he apologized for slighting her daughter last night.”

“Fucking Gods.”

One of the ladies took a tapered crystal stake from a wooden box. It was smooth, flawlessly clear, and its point was terrifyingly sharp. Upon inspecting it, Princess Halla turned to face the small group of us that had gathered on the beach. When her eyes landed on me, they went wide. “Lady Imogen, what a surprise to see you here.”

I dipped into a curtsy as her blue gaze darted over my rumpled dress, then up to my unsecured, waving hair. I wore no jewels save the spinel on my finger, no color on my face. I looked like I’d risen directly from a fitful sleep.

Halla sent her attention over the beach once more and said, quietly, sternly, “I’d like a word.”

I squeezed Agatha’s hand from nerves. “Of course, Your Highness.”

The princess started down the beach in a stroll, her arms clasped before her, head bowed. The sand and the water and the sky were all a melding shade of cloudy gray. I couldn’t walk much farther, and stopped just as the bond in my stomach began to twist with discomfort. “Your Highness, what would you like to speak of?”

She stopped and spun. “Do you know what the ritual I’m about to perform is for?”

“I was told it was for a blessing.” I kept my voice even. My face still. “For your forthcoming wedding. And the war.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” she said, in her lilting way. “I expect you can understand why I would want such a thing.”

My brow creased. “Of course.”

Halla stepped closer, her white hair pulled back from the breeze, her death-pale face pinched. “Then you will not interfere. I have been tasked with a job here, and I believe that your presence, and the… ample time you spend with the king, will prevent me from accomplishing it.”

I held her stare, unable to determine if that job was simply to make an heir, or if it was something more sinister, but both prospects made my insides churn. “What is the job you are here to do?”

Her brows lowered. Her soft words came clipped. “That question is out of line—”

I spoke on undeterred. “I know you have lost favor with your mother, Halla. You have done something to make her pass you over as her heir. I expect you want desperately to find her favor again, but I do not trust her, and by proxy I do not trust you. I need to know if you intend to hurt Theodore or his kingdom to get back in her good graces.”

I waited for fury, for her to rail over my defamation, but she only looked at me with welling tears. Her silence stretched.

“Answer me truthfully,” I said over my thundering heart.

“I have no intention of hurting him.” She blinked her tears away and looked out at the roiling gray waves. “I just need to give my mother a grandchild.”

There was no comfort in knowing that I would leave both Theodore and Halla to do their duty in providing their people an heir. I should aspire to it as well. To carry on a line, a kingdom, but I could find no purpose in it. No fulfillment or joy. I could not fathom such a thing in a world where I had no safety, no home. I could not fathom carrying on Nemea’s line. The prospect smarted like a beating switch.

“Very well.” I gave her a sharp nod and made my way back over the wet sand, toward Agatha and Theodore, who both watched me with attuned stares. I avoided each of them with determination.

Princess Halla hung back for a moment, collecting herself. Finally, she made her way toward Theodore, and her diaphanous robe billowed behind her. She lowered herself before him with a flourish. “Your Majesty, I’m grateful for your presence,” she said in her winding voice. “Blessing our union is very important to me.”

Theodore clenched and unclenched his jaw and stared down at her with unreadable eyes. “It’s my pleasure.”

She took a step nearer, tilting her head back flirtatiously to look up at him. “The ceremony tends to make me feel ill,” she said, her voice turning sweet. “I ask that you do me the honor of standing beside me, as my future husband and king, to catch me when the sickness strikes.”

Theodore straightened. “Wouldn’t simply kneeling better suit?”

“Not in the least, Your Majesty. I must stand with the sea to my ankles.” She lowered her voice. “And I must confess, I fear it.”

His lips flattened and he offered her the barest nod before she wove her fingers through his and led him toward the edge of the water. She took slow steps in, waves biting at her hem, weighing it down. Theodore stood behind her and she guided his hands up, so he held her waist. She looked over her shoulder at him, a curving smile on her lips. “Just so.”

Writhing possessives overtook me. There was no need for it, but our blood bond lit in a painful, sparking protest. Agatha came to my side and tugged me back. I’d stepped closer to the sea without even realizing it, as if beckoned.

“Deep breath,” she said, so only I could hear her. “If we’ve learned one thing, it’s that your control is poorest when your emotions are high.”

I sucked in the salt air, but it did little good.

Princess Halla turned in Theodore’s hold and gave us gathered on the beach a beatific smile. Her voice rose above the roiling waves. “I know you do not pray to my saint, as I do not worship your Gods, but I ask that you all kneel during the ceremony out of respect.”

We lowered ourselves to the sand. I spun through my memories of Agatha’s lessons from when I had been a girl, searching for what I’d learned of the Obelian saints. All I could recall was that each family chose their own. The two other robed women walked into the water. They faced the princess and lowered themselves to their knees. The red sashes down their centers floated over the white foam, a thick stream of deep red.

Halla’s voice wound through the damp air like a song, reaching high, then dropping low into her chest. It was filled with heart and adoration. “I come with gratitude, with praise, with unending reverence. I come to keep our counterpoise. To take and to give in equal measure.”

One of the ladies in the waves raised the crystalline stake and Halla cradled it in both of her hands. “I ask for a happy marriage. I ask for a union that begets many children.”

My stomach felt slimy, flipping with sick. I dropped my gaze to my lap, where my interlaced hands had gone white.

Halla’s voice softened. “I ask that you strengthen the waters with your power. I ask that you aid King Theodore’s fleet. Twist the currents in his favor, fill them with your minions, so that the enemy may be lowered to your devouring dark.”

My gaze shot to Halla like a loosed arrow. Cold crackled through me as she twisted the stake and gripped it in one hand. Halla held her other hand out, palm up. “I give you my blood as payment for your blessings.” Halla’s eyes closed, and she whispered, so quietly I could hardly hear the words over the breeze, “I remember your body sliced open, and your blood spilled.” She set the sinister tip of the stake to her index finger and sliced the end of it clean open. Red dripped into the waves. “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me. Cleanse the sea.”

Panic slammed me in the chest. “No.” I was on my feet to a chorus of gasps. I strode into the waves, water flying through the air in a wide spray.

Lachlan’s sword rang in my ears as he pulled it from his sheath and raced after me. “What the fuck—”

“Stand down, Lachlan,” Theodore shouted.

“Theo, you’ve lost your—”

“Stand down.”

I stood before Halla and ripped the stake from her fist. Our gazes stuck. The whites of her eyes were suddenly red, shot through with bright, snaking veins. Somehow, she looked even more like death now with white lips and sunken, gray cheeks. Her knees gave and Theodore braced to hold her up. “Who is your saint?” I demanded, holding the stake between us. “Tell me her name.”

“You gave your word—you would not interfere.” Her sweet, melodic tones were gone. Now she spoke with the crackling voice of a crone.

Theodore’s eyes widened at the sound.

“Answer me.” My hand fisted into the front of her robe, jerking her. She could not move at all now. The entirety of her body’s weight slumped in Theodore’s strong arms.

Halla let out a screeching yowl of frustration, of pain. “Do something, Your Majesty.”

“Imogen.” Theodore’s voice was alarmingly even. I met his gaze over Halla’s shoulder and there was something in it that stilled me. Disorientation. The steady, noble man did not know what to do. “Let her go, Im.”

I couldn’t bring myself to obey. My voice turned heavy and begging. “She worships Eusia.”

“Eusia.” Halla’s red eyes rounded at the name, and her jaw went slack. “You know Eusia?”

“I know her well.” My chest heaved with quick breaths. “Why do you worship her? What magic did she perform for you?”

Halla gaped, affronted. “She performed a miracle. For our family.”

“She performed a spell,” I said through my teeth. “What was the payment required for it?”

Some realization crashed over her at my question. Her face went blank. Her mouth closed into a thin, refusing line. My talons slipped from the tips of my fingers and sliced through the front of her robe.

“Imogen,” Theodore yelled, “let her go.”

I shook my head, and with a jerk, I forced her easily from his hold. He wasn’t expecting my force. Her body crumpled into the water, but I held her above the surface as I strode in deeper. It was cold and cutting when it reached my thighs. “What did your family pay for the spell?”

The water obeyed when I told it to envelop her like a coiling serpent, and she sucked in a rattling, terrified gasp. “Get me out of the water,” she cried in terror. “Please.”

“You should fear the water, Halla.” I pulled her nearer, locked my eyes with hers. “It belongs to me.”

I sent another current to wrap and writhe around her body. Her trembling cry cut through the morning mist.

“A body,” she finally said. “The price for her miracle was a body.”

“Whose?” My voice was strange to my own ears. I sounded as vast and powerful as the crashing sea. I blurred into it, losing myself.

Halla jerked in my grip like a fish snagged at the end of a line. Tears poured from her reddened eyes. “My father’s. Eusia ensured that my mother would finally have a child. She became pregnant with me. And as payment, she gave her my father.”

My face bent with disgust. I looked up to Theodore, who stood frozen behind her, and our gazes stuck for a long, awful moment. “Eusia is a monster,” I said to Halla, “and you worship her all the same?”

Even at the stomach-knotting thought of what the empress had done, my mind still slunk back to Nemea. How the empress had said he’d been attentive while she’d mourned her husband. I thought of that disemboweled family, of my ring, plucked from one of their limp fingers. I thought of the red sash that ran down the front of Halla’s robe. Of the story of Eusia’s execution, her body sliced open and flung into the sea. I thought of the prayer Halla had spoken over the water and how Nemea had taught me the very same one when I was a little girl, bouncing blithely on his knee.

Below the plucking in my chest, below the oily darkness of my bond with Eusia, and the shining warmth of the one I shared with Theodore, was a knowing. A sudden, terrible clarity.

“Imogen.” Theodore’s voice was an anchor. It brought me back to my flesh and bone. I could feel the distinction between the water and my skin once more. My gaze fell upon him, standing before me like a signal fire, and my eyes burned at his radiance. “Bring her back to the sand, Immy.”

I couldn’t make myself move. For one step would beget the next, and now I knew where the heartbreaking path forward led.

Theodore walked farther into the waves, and I watched him with studying eyes. The slant of his nose, the hard cut of his jaw, the dark hair that edged his furrowed brow. I thought of his breaths in my ear and his lips on my skin and the shape of my name on his tongue when he’d whispered it in the darkest hour of the night.

“Now, Imogen. I am your king.” He said it firmly, as if the statement were a solid grip on a trusty hilt. A weapon that had never failed him.

I towed Halla a step closer to the shore. “And what am I?” The question was strung through with more emotion than I cared to reveal. His brow smoothed at the question. “Your subject? Your mistress? Your queen? The heir of Seraf and queen of Sirens? I am none of those things and all of them at once. I belong nowhere and everywhere.”

Hurt passed over his face like a storm cloud. “You know where you belong.”

“I don’t.” My throat narrowed. “The only piece of me that has found a true home is my heart.” A breath trembled through my lips. “But I am more than that, aren’t I? You want this to be tidy and painless. You want things to stay as they are, but I fear everything must be undone before either of us can hope to have what we want.”

There was a war within him; I could see it in his eyes. Halla shook in my grip, and I hauled her up, so her face was mere inches from mine. “I will see an end to your saint.” Unceremoniously, I released her. She fell with a shriek below the surface, and I sent a wave to carry her back to the sand.

Theodore helped collect her from the tangle of sodden silk that she lay in. The effects of the spell she’d performed had slowly worn off. Her color had returned. The red had left her eyes. Her legs shook, and she let herself lean into Theodore’s chest. “She said she was your queen,” she whimpered, looking up at him, distressed and needy.

Theodore looked to me, then back to Halla. I’d been foolish to speak so plainly, to reveal that I was a threat to her claim on him and her title, but I could only hope that Theodore would neutralize it. He took a full breath. “She is.”

I stared at him, dumbstruck.

There was a note of promise in his voice, as if telling Halla the entirety of what sat between us might let him keep me. “Imogen is the Siren heiress. We share a blood bond, and as a result, she can use my power. Our bond will keep her safe as she travels to find… to find Eusia.”

Halla stood leaning against him for a long moment, stunned. Slowly, she raised a trembling hand to Theodore’s cheek. When she spoke, her voice was once again sweet and smooth. “My mother will crush us all for this.”

Theodore’s face went stony.

“You gave your word, did you not? That I would be your queen.” Her thumb traced the line of his cheekbone. “And isn’t the word of a king as binding as a scratch of ink from his pen?” Her words turned cutting, menacing. “See your bond broken, Your Majesty. Our wedding is in one week.”

Her threat stung me, sent my need to protect him surging. I clamped my jaw against the impulse and reached into my pocket for the severing draught. I stopped when I felt something through the water. The plucking in my chest sped faster. Cold fingers brushed my ankle. Broken talons scratched up my calf.

“Not fucking now.” I sent a command shooting through the waves. The nekgyas rose up at my behest, breaking the surface with empty eyes. Halla screamed and scurried out of the water completely. Lachlan, Eftan, and Agatha all reared back too. Three Siren corpses stood before me. Their blue-gray flesh was knit through with seaweed and rot.

They spoke in unison through their black mouths, as Eusia’s voice echoed through my skull. “Home. Home. Home.”

Eusia had sent them to mock me. To tell me once more what she’d been trying to tell me from the start. To tell me what I’d tried so hard to ignore.

“I know.” I hoisted my clinging skirt and turned toward the shore. The water curled up my shins as I strode out of the sea. The nekgya still chanted their taunt, even as my wet slippers met dry sand. Everyone gaped, Theodore included, as I kept moving up the beach. When I reached Lachlan, I stopped. “I’ll need a ship to escort me to Seraf when I wake.”

“When you wake?”

“Yes.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the severing draught so only he could see it.

He gave me a grave nod. “I’ll see it done.”

Head hung, I moved past Eftan and Agatha, clutching my dripping skirt in my hands. Eftan made a sound of protest as Theodore crossed the sand after me. “Your Majesty, leave her.”

Theodore had left Halla drenched and shaking behind him. “We need to speak.” He reached for me, and though it cracked me in two to do it, I stepped back from his touch. “Will you come with me, Immy? Please.”

“Go to your fiancée.”

“Eftan will look after her.”

“She’s yours to look after,” I said. “See to your duty, Theo. And I will see to mine.”

Theodore flinched like I’d struck him across the cheek. “Imogen… I refuse to lose you—”

“You were meant to lose me from the start.” My voice was shredded and weak. “I gave you my word in Nemea’s fort. Please, let me keep it.” I clutched the draught in my fist and turned away from him, hurrying toward the stairs to put distance between us.

This isn’t the end, I lied to myself as I wrestled the cork from the vial. We’d have more time. We’d tease one another again, and fight, and I’d feel again the deep timbre of his voice reverberating through me when we lay chest to chest. I told myself he was still mine, even as I set the bottle to my lips and tilted my head back.

“Imogen?” There was anguish in Theodore’s voice. “No.”

I picked up my speed. The sludgy draught slid over my tongue and stuck in my throat. At the stairs that led up to the garden I fought to swallow it down. It tasted like rot, black and thick as tar. The pain came a beat later. A hot dagger that sliced slowly through the middle of me. My knees buckled on the first step. My vision blurred. My head rocked like a club had struck it.

There were strong hands on me. Sounds that were muffled by a high ringing in my ears. I could only focus on the rushing ache in my chest. The liquid that was filling my lungs.

I tried to breathe in and a gurgling sound came from my throat. “I can’t… I can’t breathe.”

“Imogen.”

I knew that voice. It pierced through the pain, through the heartache.

My chest burned and swelled. You cannot drown, I told myself, trying to ease my panic, but I was drowning. Someone carried me and I gasped and gasped. There was a blur of color in my periphery—flowers. Bubbling in my throat. Metal on my tongue. Liquid, hot and thick, rolled over my lip and down my chin. It filled my nose. I blinked and I could feel it, sticky in the corners of my eyes.

My body jostled, cradled within those strong arms. I coughed and felt the liquid spray and fall over my cheeks. As my vision left me and my lungs scorched with the anguish of drowning, I felt the sun.

Theodore.

His power.

Hot and unwavering, it poured through me like molten gold. It tried desperately, determinedly to beat back the darkness.

But the darkness won.

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