Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"
Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
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There was nothing in the darkest, deepest part of the sea but pressure. The kind that morphs a living thing into a grotesque, slanted version of itself.
And that was where my body lay. Under all that water. Moldering. Changing.
An unbankable heat hollowed out my stomach. It was not a heat like Theodore’s, gentle and warm as daylight. It was hellfire. It boiled my blood, scalded my veins. My sight was gone, my hearing muffled, and I was being emptied. Theodore was leaving me, one drop of glistening Gods’ blood at a time.
I’d never known the sea without his power stitched through me. I’d never known the sea with only my bond to Eusia lingering in my gut.
Theodore’s absence would bring me more than heartache. For awful things filled empty spaces. And it was in the darkest, deepest part of the sea that monsters were made.
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I sucked in a breath like I’d broken the surface of the water. My body was overwarm, covered in a clammy coating of sweat. I stared up at a ceiling I didn’t recognize. It was unadorned—no gilded trimming or painted vines. It didn’t smell of vetiver soap and summer, like Theodore’s room did, but of dull mint and lavender flower and the sharp note of nepenthe.
For a moment, I wondered if I was still in the palace at all, and it felt like my chest collapsed in on itself. The narrow bed creaked as I sat up and let my legs fall over the edge. My entire body was sore as a swollen, beating bruise. The thin gray sleeping gown I wore was rough against my tender skin.
I scanned the little room, my mind stuck in a thick fog. There was a glass of water and small bottles of medicine on the shelf beside the bed. A washbasin sat below the window where glittering beams of afternoon sunlight sliced through the glass and pooled on the floor.
My eyes stung. The damned shafts of light reminded me of Theodore. I was empty, scraped clean of the warm spot where our bond had resided, but he still lingered. He was everywhere. On my skin, in my body. I could still hear the echo of his voice in my ear.
It was bitter determination that forced me to stand. That forced me to bite back my tears and set my mind to my task. I could not sit alone in a nightdress, weeping at sunlight, or I would fall apart entirely. I had to get to Seraf. Nemea held the answers I searched for.
I made for the washbasin and paused at a new weight that hung around my neck. I reached up and tugged a long gold chain from where it rested beneath my clothes. It was finely made, with a little diamond set into the clasp, and at its end hung my engagement ring. The stormy gray spinel. My teeth clamped. I let it fall against my sternum, then set to scrubbing my skin with the frigid water.
There were folded clothes on a bench at the foot of the bed. My gaze stuck to the dark trousers and tunic. They were folded into neat, small rectangles and wrapped tightly in twine, just the way Theodore had folded our clothes while we’d traveled through the wildlands. A pair of lovely black boots sat beside them. When I noted the second pile of clothes, I stilled.
It was a gown. Black as night, but the rich fabric held the faintest sheen of iridescence. Like Siren wings. I let my fingers play over the deep V of the neckline. Tidy little stitches of midnight thread depicted a scrolling vine. It curled up to the shoulders, the splay of leaves and star-shaped blooms beautifully rendered. My fingers froze. Tucked into the vines, so the eye could not tell where one ended and the next began, were feathers.
I pulled a breath through my tight throat. He’d had a binding gown made for me. Black to resemble the endless blood bond, when the boundaries of two faded to nothing and they became one. I tried to douse the flare of hope that lit in me. I picked up the gown to shake out the skirt, and something small fell from its folds. It landed on the wood floor with a ping. My joints rioted as I bent to retrieve it.
Another ring. Clawed into the gold filigree setting was a large, honey-colored jewel. The very color of my eyes. I forced them shut. “Gods damn you, Theo.”
The door swung open on silent hinges and a young, bright-eyed woman with smooth, brown skin strode in. “Oh! You’re up.” She gave me a small smile, but her gaze skipped over every part of me, taking dutiful account. She wore her black hair pulled tightly back and under a gauzy white cap. Her dress was a deep, Varian green, its lines simple beneath her stark white apron. “Are you feeling well? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Theodore’s ring pressed into my palm as I curled my fingers around it. “No ghosts,” I breathed. But I did feel as if I were being haunted.
“Well, thank Panos for that.” She closed the door behind her. “Let’s get you dressed, Your Majesty.”
My gaze shot to hers. “Excuse me?”
The woman’s eyes went wide. She dipped into a fast curtsy. “Forgive me. I’d been instructed by the king to address you as Your Majesty.”
“By the king. But why?” My heart pounded heavily in my ears. I lost hold of reason and wondered for a breath if Theodore had found some way around Halla and her mother.
She gave her head a panicked shake. “I assumed because you are a queen, Your Majesty. Ligea’s heiress, I was told.”
“Oh.” I blinked, feeling foolish. “Of course.” I looked to the bed, brow furrowed. “How long was I…”
“Three days.” Eyes cast down in uncomfortable reverence, the woman shook out the new chemise and stays and underclothes that had lain beneath the gown.
“I’ll wear the tunic.”
She looked up at me, puzzled. “But it’s wrapped so neatly for your travel. His Majesty was very careful in how he folded them. I believe he was eager for you to wear this gown. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
My thoughts blurred. “Was he here?” Distracted, I let her pull the sleeping gown from my shoulders and slip the chemise over my head.
“He carried you here himself yesterday morning.” She wrapped the stays around my rib cage and began lacing them. “He saw to your care the first day and a half himself. Once you stopped bleeding… that’s when he turned you over to us healers.”
“I see.” Sorrow ran through me, violent as a surge. He’d left me. I’d told him to do as much, to see to his duty, and yet I couldn’t stamp out the pain of it. I donned the underclothes and stepped into the gown. She lifted it up over my hips, then strung the bodice around me with gentle tugs.
“It’s not my place, Your Majesty,” she started, carefully, “but if it helps you to know, he did not leave you willingly.” She tightened the bodice and tucked in the ties. “Chancellor Eftan dragged him out.” I nodded, unable to discern if that news was a twisting knife or a soothing balm. “Your companion, the one with the curls, was worried sick over you as well. Even the Empress of Obelia came to your bedside last night—quite vexed over your state. And this was left for you.” She pulled a sealed envelope from her pocket and my heart lurched.
The wax cracked as I opened it. I crinkled it in my tight grip when I realized it wasn’t from Theodore.
Imogen,
A ship has been readied for you, as you requested. Please do not sink it. The Hercule is quick and small and has been fitted with a hearty crew. Each sailor is Siren-bound and will be immune to your lure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you found some way around that divine protection. You do so love denying us men our breath. A carriage will carry you to the docks when you wake. Find Chancellor Eftan so he can send for it.
I wish you a successful endeavor.
Cmdr. Lachlan Mela
The letter felt like a rough push out the door. I folded it closed. I set the ring I held on the bench and quietly slipped my boots on. Before I made to leave, I gathered the twine-wrapped clothes that Theodore had left me. “Thank you.”
“Don’t forget this!” The young healer plucked the ring. It caught and glinted in the shaft of sunlight as she handed it to me.
I stared at the warm, shining stone, and anger burst through me like a flint strike. I’d certainly not been fool enough to think that our severance would have been a clean, painless excision, but neither did I think Theodore would have been this naïve.
He should have let me go completely. No ring, no binding gown. They were promises that he could never keep.
The healer watched me staring at the ring, and her brows rose expectantly. “Do you feel well? Is there anything else you need? Some nepenthe for any lingering pain, perhaps.”
I slipped the ring quickly onto my finger. “No.” I strode out into the hall. I’d change once I made it to my ship.
The entry hall was being decorated for a wedding. Deep blue Obelian flags hung beside Varian ones. They lined the black marble banisters and hung above lintels. It looked like a fucking garden had been planted at the base of each of the curving stairs. Vines wove through their balusters and curled around the ankles of the Great Gods’ statues. Servants darted beneath them with baskets of tapers and bundles of flowers in their arms.
Just as those vines seemed to wind through the palace with abandon, so too did a black, plaguing anger begin to creep through me.
I nearly strode past the palace’s front doors myself, perfectly capable of arranging my own carriage, when my gaze caught on Eftan. He and a woman in a servant’s uniform stood at the base of the far stairs, looking over papers and taking stock of the state of the entry hall.
When he saw me, his round face puckered. He strode toward me with short, quick steps, his widened gaze skipping over my visage, over the gown I wore, and finally, it stopped at Theodore’s ring on my finger. His thin lips curled back. “The king is a fool.”
I sucked in a tedious breath. “Hello, Chancellor.”
“You beguiled him. You tainted him.” He took me by the arm and, short man though he was, began to haul me toward the palace doors. “You have pushed this kingdom toward utter ruin, and he dresses you up like a play bride for it. Leave. Leave now, before he sees you.” I ripped my arm from his hold and nearly threw him off his balance. “He marries the princess in four days,” he spat, “and you cannot return. Not as his mistress, not as his—” He gave a violent gasp, face going from red to a deepening purple.
I cocked my head at how easily the lure had slipped from me, at how quickly my power obeyed my barest desire. It was different now, without Theodore’s bond strung through my middle. “Dear Eftan,” I crooned, as the man pawed at his throat. “I’ve come to you for a carriage. So that I may leave and never return. Will you help me?”
He gave a frantic nod.
A slow smile curved my lips. “How good of you.”
I turned on my heel for the doors and released the lure, listening eagerly for the echo of his desperate inhale as it bounced off the marble.
The afternoon was warm and clear. Damp, flower-scented air pushed through the cracks of the carriage door. I’d grown so used to the scent and how it mingled with the sea that I hardly noticed it anymore, but I pulled in a heavy breath now as the carriage jostled me over the blue cobblestone road that led toward Panos Port.
My mind churned like the surface of the sea, with black and lashing thoughts. They kept leading me back to Nemea, to his empty gray eyes and unyielding cruelty. To his cold, dry mountain, far, far from the sea. I’d never thought I’d return. I’d done all I could to avoid it. But of all the people in the archipelago who might know where Eusia was, it was him.
Before the carriage lurched to a stop, I slipped the ring Theodore had given me onto the chain around my neck and huffed a breath thinking about the future I could fund with my collection of engagement jewels. My hair had been washed while I’d been asleep. It smelled of sweet flowers and orange, and I plaited it down my back in a long braid. When I was done my hands had stopped shaking.
As I adjusted on the bench, something sharp poked my thigh. I searched the seat beside me, ran a hand over my dress. I froze at the square of folded paper that I felt in its pocket. A letter. Sealed in green wax, pressed with Theodore’s sigil—a hand wrapped in vines.
My shaking returned as I tore through it. I pressed the paper over my lap to keep it still enough to read.
Immy,
I begin uncertain what to write you. I am overcome by the empty space you have left behind. Please know, I had no intention of leaving you. I was ordered to do so by my council. They said I have forgotten my duty, that I have brought war upon us with my lack of control. Eftan refused to let me give you the binding gown and ring until I threatened to have him permanently removed from the palace.
All this to say, I am adrift.
I am bereft, but I think my purpose is growing clearer than it ever has been. My duty, my desire—they have become one entity. They are both unquestionably tied to you. The absence of you has shown me that, if you will let me, I will happily carve myself open again and pour you back inside me. I cannot see how yet. I don’t know the way. But if you will have me again at the end of all this—even if you won’t—I am yours.
For now, I must do terrible, punishing things to keep my people and you safe. Come back to me and absolve me of them.
Yours unendingly,
Theo
I smoothed a hand over the creased paper, my heart weighty and pained in my chest. “Gods, Theo.” He would completely forgo his duty to his kingdom if I ever returned to him. He would let me utterly ruin him. And yet, if I were honest, that was precisely what I wanted. Eyes burning, I refolded the paper and tucked it beneath my stays, above my breast.
Terrible, punishing things.
The driver pulled us to a stop beside another palace carriage, this one large and drenched in carved golden vines. I choked on a breath. My carriage door swung open, and the footman reached in a hand.
I shook my head. “Is that the king’s carriage you parked us beside?” If he saw me with his ring, in his gown, his scant resolve—and mine—would disintegrate.
“Uhh.” He walked away from me, then returned. “Aye, Your Majesty. It is.”
“What the hell is he doing at the bloody docks?”
The man pushed his lips forward, taking me in with round brown eyes. “I can’t say. Should I find out?”
“No, no, no. I’ll just walk fast. Do you see him?” The man looked left, then right. Then he shook his head. I gripped the little bundle of traveling clothes Theodore had left me and bounded out of the carriage without taking the footman’s hand. “Thank you.”
The docks were crammed and sprawling. Rows and rows of damp wooden planks and a forest of masts surrounded me on all sides. I was swallowed up by sailors and merchants hauling goods up and down gangplanks, their whistles and shouts piercing my ears. Squinting through the sunlight, I read the nameboards on the bows, and when I reached the end of the first run of decking I stopped. The water in the harbor was so blue and clear, so gentle and rolling, that I nearly forgot what swam through it.
A ship in the distance caught my eye. I raised a hand to block the glare. Those were Obelian flags flapping at the top of each of the ship’s four masts. A cluster of ice-blue runes on a sapphire background that had always reminded me of snowflakes.
That was the empress’s ship.
The wedding was currently being prepared for—the entire palace in a spin to see that everything was done and ready. I couldn’t comprehend why the empress would leave just days before her beloved daughter wed, what with her demands and detailed contracts ensuring Halla’s devoted care. All that talk of heirs and allowances and gardens to worship her monstrous saint in, and she was leaving before seeing Halla in her bridal gown.
The ship slunk past the breakwaters and realization struck me. The empress would never have left unless she’d gotten what she’d truly come here for.
Her contracts.
Her trade routes secured, treaties guaranteed. My stomach fell. Theodore must have signed them. For why else would a woman like the empress come all this way south? She could have shipped Halla off to be married on her own, like all rulers did with their children. She did not make the treacherous journey for the love of her child, even if she had sacrificed her husband to have her. Everything the empress did, every choice she made, every order and request, secured her own power.
A chill slithered over my skin despite the warm afternoon. I gritted my teeth at the building pressure in my chest when resounding whoops and cheers drew me in. Behind me, the crowd shifted and fanned out as the metallic clacking of armor sounded. I rose up on my toes and saw a flash of gold.
It was Theodore’s retinue. He must have seen the empress off. Princess Halla’s halo of white hair came first, luminescent as a pearl stolen from the seafloor. The glimpse was quick, as his soldiers soon barred my line of sight. Mindless and foolhardy, I pushed my way to the front of the throng. It was as if my body were being drawn by a magnet, my gaze hungry for a parting view of him.
A boot landed on my toe; an elbow jabbed my sternum. I tucked myself behind a tall, broad dockworker and when I saw Theodore, I lost all sense of pain and place. I evanesced into nothing but yearning. He looked like a myth, as stern and beautiful as the God he’d come from. His soot-colored coat and trousers accentuated the stunning lines of his body. The wind had pulled at a few dark locks, and they waved over his brow. I was close enough to see the green of his eyes, the curving line of his full lips. His mood was gloomy, his head bent down to the decking as he passed.
That weight on my chest crushed down harder. I wanted to scream Look at me, but I drove my teeth together. I stared at his back for one more tight breath before I forced myself away from the crowd of onlookers.
“Imogen?”
I froze, then whirled to see Lachlan, suited in his golden, vine-etched armor. He’d broken away from the procession and taken me in with startled hazel eyes. He closed the space between us in a few long-legged steps.
“I’m leaving. I’m just looking for the—”
He threw his arms around me. His rerebraces and vambraces pinched my arms. His breastplate scuffed my chin.
I grunted. “What the hell are you doing?”
He pulled away and held me by the shoulders. “Glad you’re not dead.”
My brows quirked. “Was I nearly?”
His mouth popped open as some memory seemed to surface in his mind. “Theodore certainly thought so,” he said, somber. “Agatha too. They mourned that first day as if you’d gone.”
I shrugged out of his hold, hating the way my eyes stung. “But not you, right, Commander? Death would have been a much cheaper way to be rid of me, after all.”
His mouth twisted sardonically. “You think I wanted you dead?”
“The lover of your king is your enemy, and all that.” My brows rose. “I almost killed you too, don’t forget.”
“I hadn’t.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you dead. I don’t want Theo miserable, which he currently is. I just need this kingdom whole and safe.” He stared out over the bustling docks. He bore a new burden too. It was in the grim line of his brow, the somber set of his mouth. “How do we see all that done?” I gave my head a resigned shake, which he met with a condescending look. “Come now, you’re the embodiment of a Great Goddess. Ichor in your veins. Stubborn and greedy for what’s yours. You’ll find a way.” He pointed to a ship behind me. “That one.” His half smile left his eyes flat, cheerless. “Goodbye, Imogen.”
Despite his words, it was a hopeless farewell. I could only nod in reply as he started on his way. “Lachlan,” I called out, surprising myself. He returned with a question on his face. “I… could use your advice. You spent all those years away from Agatha… How? How did you keep yourself together?”
He scratched at his chin with a gauntleted hand. “You don’t want my advice.”
“I’m low on options, Commander.”
He huffed an uneasy laugh. “All right. If you must know—I drank and I whored. Then after a few years, I took proper lovers. I was never without one. I felt worst when I was alone. It wasn’t until many years later that I took a friend as a lover. And he… he was good for me. He showed me care and helped me climb out of the low places that I’d made my home.”
“And you were happy in that time? With him? Without Agatha?”
Lachlan shook his head. “I’m sorry, Imogen. I was content. I was satisfied and enamored. But I was never happy like I was with her.” He gave me an apologetic shrug. “But you’re not me. Plenty of us fools move on to find better love. Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”
I blew out a long breath. “I feel worse.”
“I tend to have that effect.”
I laughed, then glanced behind me. Hercule was carved into the nearest ship’s nameboard, the scrolling letters painted red. I moved toward its gangplank. “Tell Agatha I love her.”
“As soon as I can find her.”
I stopped. “What?”
He was unbothered, but an alarming prickle sped down my body. “Haven’t seen her since last night. She’s likely just taking some time to herself after everything that’s happened. You know how she is.”
The oddity of it struck me. Agatha would never have left my side. She would have refused to let me wake in that strange room alone—but I was being absurd. She was no longer my keeper, and I did not want her to be. Besides, Agatha was sharp claws and full of mettle, with a spine like steel. I had no reason at all to feel such foreboding. I gave Lachlan a pointed look. “Find her. The second you get back to the palace go search for her. Tell her I’ll come back safe.”
His brow knit like I was being ludicrous. “All right,” he said, flippantly. He sobered at my stern glare. Nodded. “All right. I will.”
“Good. Thank you.” I started for the Hercule feeling like my heart was close to rupturing. “Take care of them both,” I said over my shoulder. He flattened his lips, nodded his head, and disappeared into the crowd.
The gangplank bowed under my weight, and I held my skirt in my hands, studying the way the light shifted over the fabric. Purples and blues and greens swirling over its black surface. I made straight for the cabin the captain appointed me, locked the door, and tie by tie, I yanked the gown from my body, peeling away the vines and feathers like they were an old skin. A lump sat in my throat as I folded it carefully and set it safely at the end of the cot.
The twine burned my fingers as I tore it from the folded trousers and tunic. They’d been made to fit me. My fingers bumped over the little gold buttons down the back of the tunic. It was designed to be opened to make space for my wings.
I forced the tunic on, when clanging rang through the side of the ship. A tolling bell. A low, eerie horn reverberated through the air, pulling my muscles taut with its warning. I ran from my cabin, out onto the deck, where the crew was frantic. They hurried to retie ropes that they’d already undone. They looped the mooring line back around the cleat. Even the docks below were clearing, people running toward the cobbled streets of the island, away from the harbor.
The ship’s crew was starting down the gangplank. “What’s going on?” I asked a sailor, pulling her arm to halt her. Her cheeks were sun-weathered, freckled, and lined.
“Enemy ships,” she said, inclining her head out toward the horizon.
I had to squint, but I went deathly still when I saw them.
Those familiar smudges.
Those red sails.
Serafi warships.
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