The False Princess

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Booted footsteps echoed down the street as Melaina’s men saw us standing there. They put on speed. “Go through, go through,” I shouted, and we tumbled over one another through the door. Kiernan slammed it behind him as I glanced around wildly, expecting someone to have seen us fall into the palace gardens and called the guard. But there were no pleasure walkers out today; everyone was inside, awaiting the start of the coronation.
“They’ll be able to come through, too,” Kiernan said as he hefted his sword out of its sheath. “You two, go! I’ll hold them—”
But Mika only took a step back from the door, and, with her royal blood and words withdrawing, it vanished, leaving nothing but the wall behind.
I let out the breath I’d been holding at the exact moment that Kiernan and Mika did the same. Our eyes met, and there, in the middle of the palace garden, we began to laugh.
But we couldn’t laugh for long. When our giggling had died away, I scanned the garden as I chewed on my lip, thinking.
“Will they be able to get in?” Mika was asking Kiernan, who shook his head.
“I don’t think so. The coronation will start soon, if it hasn’t already, and Melaina made sure that no strange people could get in. Unfortunately for her, that’ll include her ruffians. I think we’ll be safe.”
Mika snorted. “Of course. Perfectly safe.”
I ignored them. In my mind I was traversing the halls of the palace, deciding which ones would take us to the Hall of Thorvaldor with as little notice as possible. I had to push back the memories that were threatening to overwhelm me: the smell of the gardens in summer, the way the sun shone on the buildings of the palace. I couldn’t slip back into those feelings, those longings for things that were past. I had to focus, but it was hard, because I felt so tired and scared.…
Somewhere in the palace, bells began to ring. The coronation was beginning.
Yanking myself free of the memories, I reached out to grab Mika’s hand. “Follow me,” I told her. “Whatever happens, however anyone tries to stop us, just follow me. If I’m taken, follow Kiernan. You both know the story—you can tell them.”
“So that’s our plan?” she asked. “Just waltz in and just tell them?”
I nodded with a shrug. “I can’t think of anything else. We just have to get into the hall and make it to the front. We should be able to get enough out that they’ll want to listen.”
“When you’re telling the story,” Kiernan put in, “just make sure that they know Orianne didn’t have anything to do with it. That she didn’t know. The last thing we need is a mob attacking her or something.”
“Agreed.” I took a deep breath, though it didn’t steady me as much as I would have liked. “Let’s go.”
Because of the bells, we took the most direct way possible. The very route, I realized, that I had taken with Cornalus the day they had told me who I really was. Now, though, no nobles strolled the halls, no servants scurried to do their bidding. Everyone was either in the Hall of Thorvaldor or in the feasting rooms, making them ready for the celebrations to follow the crowning.
Still, two guards stood at one of the side doors into the hall, just as they always did. One held out an arm as we approached, but Kiernan slid smoothly to the front of our group. “You won’t tell my father we were late, will you?” he asked with a rueful smile. “He threatened to banish me back to Rithia if I couldn’t be on time today. But it was my cousins, truly. They’re overwhelmed with being in the city—couldn’t seem to get dressed this morning.”
The guard glanced over Kiernan’s shoulder at us. Mika and I smiled the same tight smile. He’ll know, I thought. He’ll recognize me, or realize how alike we look. He’ll know something’s wrong.
But the guard only grinned at Kiernan, promising not a word to the Earl of Rithia. I could hear voices indoors, and the murmur of hundreds of people as he pushed the door open a crack to let us slip inside.
I had no idea what was occurring at the front of the room. Though chairs had been set in rows to cover the entire floor of the hall, the crowd was still standing, blocking my view; only the white columns were visible where they reared to hold up the ceiling. I could hear shuffling in the balcony above, and knew that it, too, had been filled. A single aisle had been created in the center of the room. I pushed and clawed my way through the chairs to reach it, Mika and Kiernan behind me. Offended muttering rose up as we shoved past people, but I paid it no mind. I practically fell into the open aisle, knocked forward again as the others skidded after me.
No one noticed. All eyes were locked on the front of the room where Orianne was kneeling on a short platform in front of the throne. Her dark hair fell in shining waves down her back, and she wore a long red robe trimmed with ermine, which fanned out around her where she knelt. A priest of the Nameless God held his hands over her head, blessing her. Even from behind, she looked regal, elegant, everything that a princess—a queen—should be.
There was a moment, a second when I could have hesitated, when I could have turned around and left. She had been trained, after all, almost as well as I had in the things a ruler should know. And she looked the part, much more than Mika or I did. No one had truly seen us yet; we could have gone without anyone ever realizing we had been there.
I didn’t even pause.
“Stop!” I shouted, striding forward with my head raised. I had never walked so straight, so purposefully when I had been the princess. The old queen sitting on a chair beside the throne on the dais, looking sad and proud at the same time, saw me first. Her hand went to her chest, as if she felt faint.
“Stop!” I cried again as heads turned to look at me. The priest’s hands faltered over Orianne’s head. “She isn’t who you think she is.”
I had reached the front of the room, mere steps from where Orianne now rose and turned to see me. Her eyes widened, and I saw her throat flash before a figure peeled away from the first row of chairs, where Cornalus and the other members of the council sat.
Melaina stepped out in front of me, forcing me to stop.
Her own dark hair, the exact color of Orianne’s, I now saw, was coiled about her head in crownlike braids. She wore a red gown piped with the black of a Master wizard. She was beautiful, queenly, and her eyes flashed as she saw me, then widened even more as her gaze flicked behind me to see Kiernan and Mika.
“What is this?” she asked in that velvet voice, which nevertheless carried to the very back of the balcony.
“You know what it is, Melaina,” I said in a low voice. Then, shifting my gaze to Orianne, I said softly, “I’m sorry.”
Then I spun to face the noble ranks of Thorvaldor and cried, “You have been deceived! My lords and ladies, you have been betrayed by one of your own.”
I heard a rustle from behind me, and then the queen called, “Nal—Sinda Azaway. What is the meaning of this?”
Looking around at her, I felt my heart thump painfully. No matter what Melaina said, no matter how the queen had let them treat me, she had been my mother, once. “You were deceived,” I repeated more softly. “We all were. By Melaina Harandron.”
“This is ridiculous,” Melaina began, but Orianne raised a quick hand.
“Let her speak,” was all she said, but Melaina had to fall back, a dangerous look on her face.
“She conspired against you, Your Highness,” I said. “She worked with the oracle of Isidros—her sister—to make a false prophecy, one that would make you think that Nalia was in danger. She convinced you to switch your daughter with another girl to protect her, but when you did, she switched her again, for her own daughter.” I raised a hand to point an Orianne, standing so straight and rigid on the little platform. “She gave Nalia to a poor woman in Saremarch, where she would always know where she was. She killed her own sister so that she wouldn’t have a change of heart and tell. She sent redvein fever to Neomar so he would have to leave the city, so he wouldn’t notice that Orianne had the spell on her, too. She killed the king with that same illness!”
A gasp from behind me, and then the queen was on her feet. “What?” she cried. “What did you say?” Her face, already pale and tired looking, had gone whiter still, and her hands clenched her skirts.
“She killed the king,” I said quietly. “She told me she did.”
The queen pressed her lips into a thin, tight line. “Why would she do that? Melaina has been loyal to our family, one of our best advisors. Why would she do any of that?”
I wanted to go to the queen, to take her hand, but I made myself stand very still. “It wasn’t just for herself. It was vengeance. She hid it, but she’s a Feidhelm, and she wanted the throne for her own family.”
It was an old story, that of the Feidhelms, but the queen knew it. I could see her eyes flick to Melaina, considering. A murmuring rose in the crowd as the few people who remembered the Feidhelms whispered to their neighbors, and those to their neighbors as well.
“A fine story.” Melaina’s voice cut through the tumult, clear and sharp, and I jerked around to see that she had turned to face the crowd. “But just that—a story made up by the girl set up to replace the true princess so that she might grow up out of danger.” The muttering began again as people realized for a certainty who I was. Melaina shook her head, a graceful, smooth motion. “It has been hard for you, hasn’t it, Sinda? Getting used to your real life? Hard enough that you’ve come here with this wild tale, hoping to bring down the true princess?”
“That’s not true,” I cried, but Melaina was speaking again, her midnight voice so seductively calm.
“Your Highness,” she said, inclining her head to the old queen. A look at Orianne: “My princess. My fellow Thorvaldians. What is more credible? A sixteen-year-old plot concocted by me? One in which I killed my own sister, faked the death of my own child. One that I set in motion all alone, without the knowledge of a single other soul.” She smiled. “My fellow wizards at the college will tell you I am clever. But I am not that clever.
“So … which is more credible? This strange story, or another answer? That this girl, half crazed by the upending of her world—a sad thing, true, but one done for the good of this country—should come here and try to disrupt the coronation?”
The muttering grew louder as people craned their necks to get a better look at me. “I’ve been to Isidros,” I shouted over the noise. “I’ve seen the oracle’s own writings. I have her confession with me now.” It did no good. Hardly anyone seemed to be listening to me. “We came in through King Kelman’s Door. Only the true princess could do that!”
“More fantasies,” shot back Melaina. “You came in with Kiernan Dulchessy, who will apparently do anything for you, as he’s been caught in your wiles for years.”
“She has the birthmark,” I cried, lunging forward to drag Mika to the front; I grabbed her arm and forced it into the air. “The princess’s birthmark.”
“A trick,” Melaina said easily. “One you have concocted, Sinda.”
“It’s true,” I tried again, but my voice cracked with strain, and no one heard me. The councillors in the first row were looking at me and shaking their heads while the noise from the crowd increased. Fingers were jabbed in the air as the sound grew; people glared at me, at Kiernan and Mika, from their places. Dropping Mika’s arm, I took a step toward the queen, thinking that perhaps I could persuade her, but she had retreated toward her chair again. Kiernan was trying to reach Cornalus, but two noblemen had reached out to grab his arms; he struggled in their grasp, trying to reason with them. Mika stood alone, just a few steps from the platform where Orianne had wrapped her arms around herself. Melaina took a step toward Mika, who backed up and tripped against the platform. I whipped around and saw the queen still standing by her chair, a pained look on her face as she stared at me. But she did not come forward to help me.
They don’t want to believe, I thought in despair. It’s too much, too hard, and she’s too good.
We had failed, I realized. In just a moment, someone would call the guard, who would arrest us for treason. I had to do something, but what? No one could hear me over the shouting now—no one wanted to hear me. I had run out of options.
I looked from Mika, who was scrambling onto the platform to escape Melaina’s advance, to Orianne, who seemed frozen in her place. Three men held on to Kiernan now, and he was flailing as he tried to free himself, his eyes swinging wildly from Mika to Orianne to me. Kiernan, who should have been standing among the nobles, dressed in his best finery, ready to make mischief at the coming feast. Where he would have been standing, if not for me. Instead, he stood on my side, inside the strange triangle of Orianne and Mika and me. Fighting against Orianne, who was his friend. Fighting for me, his best friend, and a girl named Mika whom he had only just met, but liked immediately.
A mirthless laugh escaped my lips. He had loved all of us in different ways, for all the good it had done him.
And then something inside me shifted, as if a piece of broken roof had fallen to let the light into a dark room.
Kiernan had loved us. All of us, in different ways. He had seen something in each of us that he could cling to, that he could love. Was it the piece of soul we all shared? Though Mika’s by right, some part of her lived in Orianne, and somewhere, the tiniest bit still hid inside me. Even Melaina had said it, that they had not been able to get it all out.
What had Philantha said? Spell. I feel it—between you two. Something connecting …
The spell still bound us, three sides of a triangle, holding our souls together. It was the spell that still made Orianne appear to be the princess. If only there were some way to make Melaina remove it, or to call Neomar to the city. But that was foolish, more than foolish—absurd. Melaina would never remove the spell, and Neomar was sick or dying, and too far away to help. There was no one, no one who could—
I froze, my heart beating so quickly it hurt. In my head, Philantha’s silly, jumbled voice said: It’s easiest, of course, to cast a spell on yourself. You know yourself, inside and out, even if you don’t know that you do. It’s other people, of course, always other people who make it hard, because you don’t know them, not the way you know yourself.
Mika’s soul was still inside me, part of me. And it was inside her, too, and Orianne. A true triangle, those bits of soul forming the sides that connected us. It was a powerful spell, built to fool anyone who thought to look for it, made by the most powerful wizards of the age. But it was inside me. I might not have Melaina’s training, but I had power, power I had never let fully free. And I knew, finally, who I was. I had been finding it out ever since I had left my old identity behind that spring, even if I had resisted it and cursed it at times. In the last few weeks, I had been tested and tried, and I had made it through, though not without cost. I could finally see myself as I really was, the good and the bad, the parts of me that were strong and the parts that were weak. I knew who I was.
I was Sinda Azaway, and I could do this.
Kiernan shouted; Mika cried out as Melaina reached for her. I didn’t have time to think, or consider, or worry.
Find it, I thought. Find her soul in me, and Orianne, and give it back to Mika.
Throwing my head back, I flung my hands upward and unleashed magic.
Control. I had wanted it so badly, needed it so badly. I hadn’t ever wanted to really let my magic out, had felt I couldn’t unless I had a strangle grip on it. I had worried that it would overtake me, burn me up from the inside out, and everything around me.
Now the magic raged up and out, racing from me to Orianne and Mika. Control, I thought as I fought to hang on to the magic, to direct it as I wanted. But there was no control; the magic streamed toward them, enveloping them in its power as it had enveloped me. I heard Orianne scream; my own insides felt like they were on fire, but I couldn’t stop it. Control, my body cried out.
I felt the magic dwindle as I sought to regain my grip on it, felt it grow sluggish and start to die. The spell would fail; I knew it, could feel it starting to collapse around me. But if I didn’t do this now, there would never be another chance.
Just find it, I thought, and let go.
And suddenly, everything slowed down. It was like the magic, which had been pouring from me, paused and looked back, consideringly. As if it were asking me what to do. As if, once I had stopped trying so desperately to control it, it could work with me.
Her soul, I thought. It’s in us and it shouldn’t be. Give it back to her.
A golden haze blossomed around me, obscuring the hall and the people in it, but not before I had seen similar hazes rise up around Mika and Orianne. I was dimly aware that the noise coming from the crowd had quieted as the people realized that some spell was occurring, and I heard the tiniest of gasps from where the queen stood. Good, a small part of me thought. She’s seen this before. She’ll know what it means. But the larger part of me had no care for the queen, or the crowd, or even Melaina standing only a few paces from Mika. I saw only the haze, I concentrated only on the magic ferreting around inside me, looking for the part that didn’t belong.
I felt it when it went. Not as big as the last time, but an emptiness nonetheless, a place where there had been something, and now there wasn’t. Before I had wanted to claw that piece of soul back to me, stopper it back into the hole it had left inside me. Take it, I thought this time. It wasn’t ever really mine to begin with. And besides, I don’t need it now.
Slowly, slowly, the golden haze faded, so that I stood blinking and shaky in the hall. That expenditure of magic—more than I had ever used before—combined with the taking of Mika’s soul, was going to catch up with me in mere moments, I knew. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything; I could only look toward Orianne and Mika.
Mika had doubled over to clutch her stomach, overwhelmed by the feeling of her soul coming back together. Orianne stood more straightly, but with a hand pressed over her heart, her face pale and quiet, her eyes on me. With what looked like great effort, she lowered her arm and touched a spot just below her elbow with her other hand.
“It’s gone,” she said quietly. “I felt it. I felt it go out of me. Something …”
“Her soul,” I said with a glance at Mika. Twice now, Orianne had been told who she was, only to have it taken from her. It had been almost unendurable for me the first time; I couldn’t imagine what a second time would feel like.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, knowing it wasn’t enough.
Whispers had started in the first rows, where many of the college wizards sat. By now they would have sent probing spells at all three of us. They would be realizing who the princess was, and who she wasn’t.
I didn’t sense the slightest buildup of magic before the blow hit me. One minute I was standing there, and the next I was sprawled on the ground, feeling like a battering ram had pounded into me. A second later invisible hands gripped my throat, so that I gagged, scrabbling at my neck, and tried, without success, to suck in breath before more magic pinned me, frozen, in place.
“Stupid, meddlesome girl,” Melaina hissed. From my position on the floor she seemed to tower to the ceiling, and the air around her crackled with magic. The nobles holding Kiernan stumbled backward. He wrenched free and drew his sword. A flick of Melaina’s hand caught him in a spell so that, though he strained and pulled against it, he couldn’t move at all.
I heard movement from the area where the college wizards sat, but Melaina threw a hand up toward them, shouting, “Any spells and I’ll bring this whole room down.”
The sounds of movement stopped as the wizards hesitated, unsure whether to risk Melaina’s sending a magical jolt through the foundations of the room before they could disable her.
“You could have been powerful,” she continued to me. Her beautiful face was contorted with rage. “I gave you the chance. Now, you’ll just get to watch her die before you do.”
She whirled, arm outstretched, and what looked like a bolt of lightning arced from her fingertips toward Mika. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even close my eyes.
A triangle, set in a storm. One of its sides crumbled and fell away, leaving only two.
No, I tried to cry. No!
Orianne leaped.
She tumbled in front of the bolt, her ermine-trimmed robes flying behind her. It hit her squarely in the chest, and she dropped like a stone at Mika’s feet and didn’t move.
Silence, and then a collective gasp. Melaina staggered, her hands clutching her arms. The spells on me lessened so that I could breathe, could move.
“No,” I heard her whisper.
And then Kiernan struck her from behind, ramming his sword through her back and into her heart. She didn’t even cry out. She only lifted one arm toward Orianne, and fell.
With her death, the last vestige of her magic washed off me. I scrambled to my feet, lurching over the space between us, and dropped to my knees beside Orianne. Mika had done the same; she cradled Orianne’s head on her lap. A thin line of blood ran from one corner of Orianne’s mouth, but her eyes blinked when she saw me.
“I’m sorry.” My tears fell onto the neckline of her gown, and I futilely tried to brush them away. “Orianne, I’m so sorry.”
The barest of smiles curved her lips. “Orianne,” she whispered. “No one calls me that anymore. You remembered.”
She drew in one rasping breath, and then her eyes slid to the side, locking in place, and her chest stilled.
I looked from Orianne’s still form to Melaina’s, and then to Mika’s anguished face. Kiernan had wrenched his sword free of her body, but he made no move to approach us. People were moving around us, talking and scurrying about, but I could barely hear them. Mika and I sat without moving, Orianne still across Mika’s lap—the three princesses, what had once been a triangle, and now was broken.