It wasn’t the first time they’d had this discussion, and she brushed away his discomfort with a kiss. “I don’t mind if you claim me just a little,” she said.
Gemma could feel the discord coming to Yigris. They weren’t out of the storm by a long shot. She knew that Isbit had plans. But here, on the porch of Guildhouse, she felt safe.
Devery kissed her once more, then went inside to collect his grandmother and aunts, just as Elam came out through the front door and stood beside her on the porch. His face was haggard and his eyes were sunken. Even Albatross Tears couldn’t seem to lift the fog he’d fallen into, and Gemma hoped that the trip to sea he had planned on the Heart’s Desire with Wince would help him find peace. But she was also acutely aware that some hurts could only be dulled, never healed. As they stared off into the distance, experiencing two very different emotions, Elam sighed beside her.
“Are you going to be all right?” she asked, squeezing his hand.
“Yes,” he whispered.
She didn’t call him on it.
They were of Under, and they lied the way most people pissed.
EPILOGUE
The air was musty and cold, and there was no light. Fear gripped his chest, and Tollan had to still himself to calmness. Deep breaths. His hands fumbled around him, but he felt nothing but a stone surface.
He sat up slowly and licked his parched lips. Deep breaths. It felt as if he couldn’t get enough air, as if his lungs would never be full again. He ran his hands across his face and down his chest. Something crinkled in his tunic pocket. Clumsily, he pulled it out.
Light flared before his eyes. A swirling silver mark. Mage work. He squinted against the sudden brightness, his heart pounding in his chest as he examined the single folded sheet of parchment. He unfolded it as his eyes adjusted to the light. A letter, written in an unfamiliar hand.
King Tollan,
I do not know if this experiment will work. Perhaps, far in the future, a Yigrisian grave robber will find this letter and wonder.
For more than one hundred fifty years, I was no more than an animal that your family kept as a pet, and that sort of thing is not forgiven lightly.
I do not forgive. However, in all my years within the Yigrisian Palace, only you took the time to learn my name, and so I hope that, perhaps, you are different from the others.
As the greater queen told your great-grandfather, gold absorbs magery, swallowing up the gifts that Aegos gave us. This was how House Daghan controlled me and my daughters for all those years. It is this secret that I hope has saved you as well.
When I placed the cursed mark of the King of Yigris upon your back, I used a gold-dusted blade. If I’m right, then the mage work that Elsha used against you will slowly be absorbed by the gold within your blood, and you will one day awaken as if from a great sleep.
I have given you our greatest secret. Do not prove my trust unwarranted, King Tollan. If I am right and you wake up, do not bring my wrath down upon your city. Use this chance to make Yigris a better place.
It is done now between us. Leave it as such.
Waking up from the dead wasn’t a comfortable experience, at least not so far as Tollan could see. The dim light from the mage-marked letter showed him the interior of the Daghan family crypt—stone and hard edges, much like his family. He was sitting upon a stone altar surrounded by the corpses of flowers and the ash of spent incense. Sighing, he ran his hand over the top of his head, then yanked it back in surprise. His head was shaved bald. His heart began to pound in his chest.
Of course I’ve been shaved. They buried me. They shaved my head and washed my body and sprinkled me with salt and herbs and laid me in the crypt.
He could almost picture his mother, carrying the braid of his hair, twisting it in her grief. The image did little to still his trembling breath.
Air came in gasps as he pushed himself to stand up. Pain ripped through him, fire tracing a line from his lower back down his left leg. He tried to stretch out his leg, hoping to ease the cramp, but even the barest movement sent sharp bolts of pain through his nerves.
Glancing around, he let out a slow moan that built into a sob. On the next altar lay his brother, his body marred by the scars of the mage marks that had killed him, his head shaved of every hair.
Fighting through the pain, Tollan stumbled to his brother’s side. Despite the chill of the underground crypt, time had begun to play havoc with Iven’s corpse. Tollan tried to ignore it, but his eyes were drawn to the dark spots at the corners of Iven’s eyes and mouth, his gaze lingering on the place where his younger brother’s cheek had begun to cave inward.
He choked back a wail as he wavered on his weakened legs. The smell of decay lingered near his brother like a courtesan’s perfume. Gagging, Tollan clutched at Iven’s swollen hand. “I’m sorry, Iven. I’m so sorry I didn’t save you. I failed you. I failed …” His voice betrayed him, and he lost his ability to form words or coherent thought.
His back and legs burned in agony, but he pushed himself to stay at his brother’s side until his tears ran dry. When he was reduced to sniffling and gagging, he released Iven’s hand and looked past him to the next stone bed.
His father’s body had fared even worse than Iven’s, but Tollan had no tears for King Abram. He felt nothing when he looked at the man—an absence of feeling that only intensified the physical pain. Abram Daghan, King of Above, had been laid to rest with every hair on his head left intact. His own wife had damned him to the Void without regret.
He stumbled away from them, clutching the lighted parchment in front of him like a beacon. Beyond his father lay the body of a woman, petite in stature, her head shorn. She was not shrouded in flowers and herbs, and no ashes lay beside her. Instead, in one hand she clutched a candle to light her way, and in the other, a foot-long dagger.
He silently paid his respects to Melnora before hobbling past her. Seeing her here gave him the briefest whisper of hope. The Queen of Under would not have been carried through the streets to the crypt. That was simply not their way. She’d have come through the tunnels.
He dragged himself to the wall of the crypt, his muscles trembling against the sheer force of the pain in his back and leg. Slowly, painfully, he ran his fingers from the top of the wall downward, moving inch by inch, searching for a hidden entrance to the underground tunnels that crisscrossed Yigris. Bending at all made him cry out, tears streaming down his face, but he forced himself onward, searching. He refused to walk out into the courtyard and face the guard who was undoubtedly outside. He refused to face his mother.
Let her remember him as a child, as the solemn, sad-faced boy she’d left behind. Let her live with her regrets just as he would have to live with his. He was no longer King Tollan the Innocent. Death and rebirth had burned the naivete out of him. He was only Tollan, and he was going to find the man he loved and try to make a life with him.
His fingers slipped into a crevice, and he felt the pressure lever click beneath his touch. He pushed his way into the tunnels and drew in a deep breath.
Despite the pain, despite everything that had happened in the dark of Yigris, Tollan was free.
APPENDIX
The Four Winds: The small island continent that consists of Vaga, the Balklands, Ladia and Yigris. The eastern end of the island is surrounded by the Alabaster Sea and the western end is surrounded by the Hadriak Sea.
It is said that the island was first inhabited by four siblings—Vagal, Balkar, Elladia and Gris—the children of the goddess Aegos herself. The mother wished to grant her four children each a gift so they may create a community that thrived in their own corners of the Four Winds, so she asked them each what they would want most for their people.