Carys turned toward him and stepped forward with the sword raised. Everyone watched his sister threatening the head of the Council of Elders. “I will not have the blood of these worthless men stain the ground where my father and brother lie. And do the King and Prince have no more value than trash? Why do they still lie on the ground? Do you not care?”
Andreus staggered backward a step as his sister, still holding the sword in front of her, advanced toward the Council. The crowd around him made sounds of surprise and Andreus took another small step back, then another as he fumbled to find the pocket in his cloak that held the remedy he had with him. His fingers closed around the small black vial he carried with him at all times. The remedy could never cure him. It couldn’t kill the curse he was born with and had hidden every day of his life since. But it helped ease the symptoms when an attack came. He just hoped it wasn’t too late for it to work now.
His fingers weren’t strong enough to pull out the stopper. He had to use his teeth. Then spitting the cork seal to the side, he swallowed the horrific brew as his sister turned toward their mother with the blade still aloft. “Do you care more about the heads of these men than you do about your own king and son? What kind of queen are you?”
A crack of flesh striking flesh pulled gasps from everyone watching. Carys’s head snapped back as their mother’s hand connected with its target. Carys looked at Andreus and their mother struck her face again.
She was telling him to get out of sight. They would come up with an excuse for his desertion later. Now there was no choice.
“How dare you?” their mother demanded, striking out again. This time harder. Carys clenched her jaw but didn’t move. “I am the one who will command what will be done. They will die.”
Andreus took several more painful, unsteady steps back until he finally reached the stone wall and could use it to help him stay upright as he made his way toward the opening.
“There is no peace,” his mother shouted. “Not until all who had a hand in killing my son and husband are put to death. All of them. They will pay. They will all pay.” Andreus held the wall as footsteps grew closer. He watched his mother storm through the gate, followed by Oben and several members of the castle guard. He waited for one of them to turn and see him standing there sweaty and shaking and barely able to stand. But none did.
Under the roar in his ears, Andreus heard Elder Cestrum order the guards to take the sword from Carys and to put her in custody. She would pay for turning the blade toward the Queen.
Andreus wanted to defend his sister. He wanted to make sure she would not be punished for shielding him. But he knew she would never forgive him if the secret she’d protected all these years was revealed. Not when she had done so good a job of distracting the court and the Council—again.
Panting, he willed his legs to move as he held the wall for guidance toward an alcove that was hidden behind several tall bushes. But he was moving so slowly and the world around him was starting to go black. He could hear the footsteps approaching the gate. Voices were getting louder as he lurched forward toward the opening. The windmills churned high above.
One step.
Two steps.
Andreus stumbled into the opening and fell to his knees as the pressure expanded inside him. He gasped for breath as he fell forward. There was another flash of pain. Then everything went black.
5
Carys gripped the heavy sword in her hands as her mother quietly said something to Chief Elder Cestrum. The Queen then glared at Carys with a rage that took her breath away before she turned and stormed toward the gate with Oben and two members of the guard in tow.
The crowd parted for her and dropped into bows as their queen passed. Then they turned and looked back at her.
Carys held her ground and fought to keep the sword aloft. Her fear for her brother had pushed her to take action. It had given her strength to stand firm against their mother, who should have understood why Carys had done what she did.
The day Carys and Andreus were born, the seer said the Queen would give birth to two children on the same day and within the same hour. One would be pure of spirit. The other would be cursed. Seer Kheldin believed if the child filled with darkness was allowed to live a full life, the curse born with the child would sweep across the kingdom and the light of Eden would darken forever.
According to Mother, she and the midwife did everything possible to make sure none but the two of them ever knew Andreus almost died or that he struggled to catch his breath through the first week, especially when he cried. They were afraid the Council of Elders would see the seer’s curse in Andreus’s fragile state.
The midwife disappeared from the castle one evening two days after their birth. She was found dead, thrown from her horse while riding away from Garden City. Mother said it was the Gods’ way of helping to keep Andreus safe. But the way Mother looked at Oben when she said it told Carys that the Gods had little to do with the accident. Their mother was determined to do whatever was necessary to see Andreus safe from the harm the Council and others might do to him.
How anyone could believe Andreus’s condition could cause the kingdom to fall into darkness was beyond Carys. But people had faith in the power of the seers.
For hundreds of years the people of Eden had been encouraged to believe in the seers’ visions and predictions that promised to keep the kingdom from harm. The stories all said it was a seer who foretold that the castle and the kingdom would fall three hundred years ago. And a seer also saw the rebuilding of the kingdom, a monarch who held fast to the seven virtues, the orb that would someday shine above the castle, and the bloody battle that brought Carys’s grandfather to the throne. Belief in the seers’ magical powers and the forces beyond ordinary knowledge were sacred here. As sacred as the honoring of the winds.
Kings had always had a seer to advise them because the people trusted the visions that came from the Gods. They believed in them with a devotion that scared Carys. Because she knew one day that firm faith in the seers could turn against her brother and end in his death.
But not today. From the way everyone stared, she knew that all of the castle and Garden City tomorrow would be talking about her and the sword she now wielded.
She shifted the heavy blade in her hands. Her arms were growing weary. The fear that had propelled her to act was quickly being replaced by the sorrow and shock she’d pushed to the side. Still, she continued holding the sword and stared down the Council, giving a few last seconds to her brother. Then, looking down at her father and brother’s bodies, Carys let the sword drop from her hands.
Metal clattered on the white stones. The large guardsman who gave up his sword snatched it from the ground with only one hand. And the Council, led by Chief Elder Cestrum, moved toward her.