“Yes. Please . . . stop his suffering.”
The sorceress placed a hand on the queen’s shoulder. “I understand your determination to save him, in a way few others could. But if I do this, there will be repercussions. The burning flame has adhered to his wildness, pride, and rebellion—emotional fires feeding celestial ones. That part of him must be cast out.”
“What? No!” Queen Nova’s wail carried through the cavern’s icy depths, loud enough to shake the icicles. “I love him as he is. I can’t have him altered forever!”
“Not forever, Your Grace. Merely long enough.” Madame Dyadia attempted to comfort. “The princess is younger than he. Five years stand between now and her coronation. Should we leave him intact, his rage could grow into something even more monstrous than it already is.”
His lady mother reached for his hand, yelped at the contact, and jerked back. She rubbed her fingertips. “If I allow this, what will become of him? How will he live as only half of who he was?”
“He will not remember his time in this cavern, or know of his missing piece. He’ll awaken to feel incomplete, and convinced the princess will make him whole again. Thus, he’ll be focused upon one goal: to honor his betrothal to a girl he’s never met, to win her hand at all costs. With his rebelliousness cast aside, he’ll accept her. Which he must, to be cured, for only her moonlit touch can tame the sun in his blood. We are not killing any part of him, simply giving one half a sharper resolve and purpose, and the other a new vessel—as protection from the sun’s searing burn.”
“Can he one day be whole again?”
“Even should I exile his rebellion and rage, he will be drawn to it, wherever it might be. The princess will play a role in giving him focus, but he alone will have to face and conquer his true self. Only then will he be complete once more.”
“Too many secrets; too much risk. Perhaps if we leave him as he is—”
“He will die.”
There was a pause.
“Then we do it and bear the consequences,” Queen Nova answered, though her voice trembled with doubt. “Nerezeth has lost their king. Should we also lose our prince and all that’s promised through him, our kingdom will fall.”
The sorceress chanted, more ancient words Vesper’s ears had never heard, followed by five he understood: “Be gone from this place!”
A rippling sensation guttered through his chest as one part of his spirit ricocheted back into his body, torn away from the other. He watched through eyes half-closed as the liberated part—fluttering darkness and flickering light—hovered along the cave’s roof, dipping and swaying, at war with itself until it found a shape. The prince’s mind attempted to put a name to it, but the object swooped out into the winter wilds too quickly.
The absence in his core burned deeper than the flames. Tears seeped from the outer corners of his eyes, hot as smelted metal. The shimmery curl of a seashell appeared within his peripheral where the sorceress stood over him. She released a song trapped within: a songbird’s trill so fluid, joyful, and pure it quenched the loneliness in his heart and made him forget his missing half, imprinting upon his soul a longing for the music instead.
“You will know her by her voice,” the sorceress whispered in his ear.
Overcome with exhaustion, he vowed to find the source of that beautiful song one day. It was the only way to be cured, to be complete. An image of Princess Lyra’s silvery hair and violet tears danced upon the back of his eyelids; then, cradled by the icy surroundings, he slept.
5
A Lady, Both Grisly and Glittering
At Eldoria’s castle, there was to be no rest for Lady Griselda, trapped as she was in the pitch-black dungeon.
Upon the harrower witch’s escape from the cell, Griselda’s princess niece closed her eyes and cast them both in darkness. Griselda groped blindly about, trying to catch Lyra’s hair to use as a lead rope, but the girl whisked by without making a sound. In the farthest corner came the scrape of something being dragged from beneath the cot, then the sensation of Lyra moving through the cell again.
“Lyra . . . I’m your mother now. You must obey me. Help me find my way back.”
The princess stalled at the cell’s entrance and opened her centipede lashes, illuminating Queen Arael’s potted rose cradled against her chest. Griselda smiled smugly, convinced she had tightened the noose of compliance around the girl’s neck, until Lyra opened her lips with an indecipherable song. Griselda shuddered as shadows dispersed at Lyra’s command, flapping across clothes and skin, before whisking out the doorway.
Lyra’s footsteps scraped confidently up the stairs, taking her light-giving eyes with her. Griselda’s jaw went slack. The recalcitrant child had abandoned her.
In the darkness, Griselda froze at the stir of moths and spiders brushing over her feet and head. She held her breath until they, too, slipped from the room, drawn to their songstress.
Alone in a gloom so complete it mattered little whether her eyes remained opened or closed, Griselda sat upon the cot and drew her feet up, winding her arms about her legs. She burrowed her nose in the fabric at her knees to ward off the scent of urine absorbed by the rock walls. Panic swelled hot within her chest upon each inhalation.
One who cannot love themselves, cannot be loved.
The voice—from a lifetime ago—hissed within Griselda’s ears as if the monster sat beside her. Griselda swallowed a yelp, stiffening at the thought. She intimately knew the danger that lurked in dark places. Shadows, spiders, centipedes, scorpions, salamanders . . . things that belonged to dankness and night, and were silent while being filthy, clammy, skittering and scuttling . . . made her skin crawl. If those same abominable creatures were to obey her niece’s songs like faithful pets, her reign over the wretched child was ended. Perhaps her past had come to call . . . perhaps she hadn’t escaped after all.
A bubble of helplessness and hate rose from her chest and burst to an animalistic wail in her throat. She clapped a hand over her mouth upon the echo.
The harrower witch had triggered these memories, and alone and anxious, Griselda couldn’t stop from falling into that time long ago when she first acquainted creatures of darkness.
Griselda was christened Glistenda upon her birth. A tribute to Eldoria’s glittering hills and glistening valleys each day in that moment when the flash of dusk left in its wake a wave of dew, and the sun reclaimed its radiance.
As she grew, everyone in the kingdom agreed that Glistenda was the most dazzling princess ever to grace the castle halls with her flaxen hair as yellow as sunshine and a flawless ivory complexion, both inherited from her royal mother. Her loveliness was so absolute, she could bruise simply by laying upon a feather mattress—the barbs and shafts being too prickly to withstand.
Glistenda’s kingly father doted on his delicate princess, so long as she was blushing, docile, and soft-spoken. Her queenly mother taught her that to be seen, not heard, was a lady’s most honorable calling. But during her sixteenth year, the emptiness of vanity as an aspiration hit Glistenda full force, after she witnessed the king falling from his steed during a jousting event. After, all he could do was lie abed, be propped on his throne, or be carried in a litter about the vicinage. Kiran was always at his side—there to learn the ways of a kingdom fallen upon his youthful shoulders earlier than anyone anticipated.
Glistenda was rarely allowed to visit the king. Kiran’s time with him was too important, too pressing. Everyone said Kiran was the spitting image of his father’s own russet hardiness—also possessing his wisdom, patient temperament, and military acumen.
Glistenda was to be available for family appearances, but would never have a say in politics, legislative counsel, or the kingdom’s economics. Her royal parents, along with every adult in the castle, became too busy preening her younger brother to think about her. Had she been born a son, she would’ve been the heir, and every heart and mind hers to consume and command.
Instead, she had no voice; no say in anything. She was left to her own devices—reduced to glean attention through games played with the young men of the court. She used her wiles to get the obedience and devotion she craved.
The only exception was the one boy she desired above all others: Tristan Nicolet—beautiful ebony skin wrapped around a stalwart frame. Her brother’s best friend, and son of their father’s most trusted knight, Tristan often stood between her and her suiters. He stepped into the shoes of a brother who was too busy becoming king to defend his sister’s honor. Yet no matter how she tried to tempt Tristan into her skirts, he denied her. The very code of honor that made her love him became the thorn in her side.