Her cheeks redden, and she nips a guilty glance at me from beneath pale brows. “Sorry. My tutor taught me to lead with a firm hand. His methods were questionable, but I guess some of his teachings had merit.”
Firm hand?
I raise a brow. Wait.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
Still, I fucking wait.
She sighs, drops her gaze to the drink, then blurts, “It was nothing. Just silly things like punishing me with a riding whip across my knuckles whenever I forgot to link my letters.”
My blood turns to magma.
“He whipped you? For forgetting to link your letters?” I ask, my steady voice betraying none of the violence roiling through my veins.
“Asshole, I know. But Pah says only folk with weak hearts complain, so instead, I wrote my tutor hate sonnets I’d send fluttering into the fire,” she says, boasting a victorious smirk. Like she thinks that rights his wrongs. “Now every time I write something with my perfectly linked script, I want to punch him in the throat. Not that I know how to punch, but I’d like to do it anyway.”
“I’d like to cut off his head.”
Her wide eyes snap to mine. She opens her mouth, closes it, shakes her head, dropping her gaze to the drink again.
She probably thinks I’m joking.
I’m not.
I’d like to cut off her pah’s head, too. Though I don’t say that.
“Was that why you used to run away?”
“No.” She snatches my drink and gulps deep enough my brows pull together, then lowers the mug, cringing. “Why are you in The Fade, anyway?”
“Hunting for something. Queen owes me a favor. Cadok’s in Drelgad.” I shrug. “Timing was opportune.”
“And if he finds out?”
“He won’t. Not unless you tell on me.”
“Might consider it. I’m pretty offended by the taste of this drink you let me sip without prior warning.”
I lift a brow. The corner of my mouth tugs up the slightest amount—only because she, too, is smiling. There one instant, gone the next.
My own falls. “You need help with something.”
She settles the drink on the table much softer this time, still nursing the mug while she looks into its half-drained depths and worries her bottom lip.
I sigh.
Leaning forward, I plant my forearms on the table. “What is it, Princess?”
She swallows, and I can hear the violent thump of her heart rallying in the way hearts do when folk are preparing for battle.
Her voice is a rasped whisper when she finally says, “I … can hear him.”
“Who?”
Another swallow, and she looks up at me with glazed eyes, lifting a pale hand to her diadem.
To the Aether Stone.
My blood turns to ice.
I push back against the seat, staring, head full of thoughts I can’t tame enough to push free of my mouth.
A tear shreds down her cheek, and I see her.
Truly see her.
The dark dents beneath her eyes. Her frail, almost skeletal hand, and the way her cheekbones jut out much more than they once did. Her fingernails—chewed so close to the nub she’s made them bleed in places.
She’s wasting away …
Something fierce and feral rears up inside me.
I lean forward, forcing words past my gritted teeth. “How long?”
She blinks, releasing another tear she’s quick to dash away as she drops her stare to the tabletop. “I’m not certain. My nursemaids said I screamed nonstop the first few cycles after I was born, which they considered strange because the diadem was expected to weaken me. They suspected I could already hear the Creators and that I screamed to drown out their prattle, so they clipped an iron necklace on me. Said I immediately calmed.”
I swallow thickly.
I’d heard she was a restless youngling, but I put it down to the echo of trauma from her start in this world—a world I’ve grown to hate.
“But as I grew older, the silence itched at me in ways I can’t describe, and I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was missing something. When I was just shy of eighteen, I took the necklace off, and all I heard was … was wailing,” she rasps.
My throat dries.
“His fear, his sadness … It flowed through me like a stream. I felt like I was being ripped apart, piece by piece.” Her gaze flicks up to meet mine, and I think a spear through the heart might hurt less.
There’s so much pain in those big blue eyes …
“I put the necklace back on,” she says, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. “Left it on for many, many phases. Because I was a coward.”
“You’re not a coward, Kyzari. Don’t ever speak about yourself like that.”
She cuts me a faux smile, then draws another drink of mead, almost draining the mug before she speaks again.
“I found courage eventually. Removed the necklace for the first time in over eighty phases. I listened to his sounds. Truly listened. I realized it wasn’t just screams and wails, but words,” she says, voice cracking as her wide eyes plead with me. “I began threading those words together, shaping his language in my mind, learning … too much.”
My gaze nips at the curtain, and I plant my arms on the table again.
There’s more, I know there is. She’s dancing around the fiery pip like she’s afraid to handle it.
“Keep going.”
There’s a moment of pause before she lifts her chin, and for the first time since she sat down at my table, I see her as someone with something to guard.
Something to lose.
“I’m telling you this not because I want your pity. Pity doesn’t help me any more than it helped him during those many phases I sat in silence.”
“Then why?”
“Because I want help to set him free.”
It’s like she reached across the table, swung her hand back and slapped me in the face.
“Impossible,” I growl. “It’ll kill you. The diadem can only be removed from a pulseless host.”
“I don’t intend to die, Uncle. There has to be another way. I just have to work it out.”
I’ve never wanted to shake someone so much in my life, my hands bunching into fists so tight my knuckles pop.
“And why do you want to do that?” I grind out. “The Aether Stone has been passed down for generations. Your mah wore it. Her mah before that. On and fucking on—”
“His name is Caelis,” she announces, her voice stained with a fierce imperial lilt. She pins me with a stare that cuts through flesh and bone. “And because I’ve fallen in love with him.”
A rumble boils deep inside my gut, scalding up my throat with such intense heat I swear my flesh peels off.
I know too well how malignant the roots of love can be. I’ve suffered from the same ailment for over an eon, and I’ll continue suffering until the dae I die.
Kyzari’s suffering, too—I can see it in her eyes. It’s taken her, and it won’t let go.
If my brother hadn’t kept her so sheltered from the world, perhaps she wouldn’t have fallen in love with a fucking stone. Perhaps she wouldn’t be trying to rid herself of a diadem that could very well take her life the moment it’s ripped free.
“There is no reality where this ends well,” I snarl through gritted teeth, and something shatters in her eyes.
“You can’t know that …”
“I know he’s in that thing for a reason. That your family line was blessed with the power to contain him for a reason.”
She rips her gaze from mine, stare plummeting to the table so fast she probably thinks I missed the stain of guilt clouding her eyes.
“What do you know?”
“Nothing,” she bites out, cheeks flushing.
My eyes narrow. “What. Do. You. Know?”
She shoves to a stand. “This was a mistake. Forget I said anything.” My eyes flare as she flips up her hood and makes for the curtain. Looking at me over her shoulder, she says, “I will leave you with your empty mug.”
She goes—her parting words like drips of poison fed to me on a tarnished spoon—leaving the curtain wide open. Allowing me a perfect, unveiled view of the dais. Of the musician perched on the stool beneath an illusion of luminous snowflakes, the vacant seat beside her haunting me to the marrow.
I look at my empty mug, pulling my lungs full.
Holding the breath.
Kyzari’s right, but my mug’s not the only thing that’s empty.
My chest feels pretty fucking hollow, too.