She was eight years old, as was he, newly arrived there to live with his father, Vespus, the then Rhyllian ambassador, after the death of his mother back home. When he’d found her in the nursery, his face had changed, widening, his eyes narrowing as his lips had parted and he’d bared his teeth at her. She’d punched him in the nose and run from him, her short legs pumping down the corridor as she tried to put as much distance between them as she could. But his legs were longer, he’d grown up on milk and honey and fresh air, and he easily caught up to her in the old ballroom.
“Why did you hit me? Why do you run from me?” he’d asked in halting Rhannish, tucking his fair hair behind pointed ears. She’d remained mute and staring, balled fists ready to hit him again if she needed to. “I only want to be your friend.”
He’d raised a hand, long slim fingers pointing towards the ceiling, and eventually she’d uncurled her own, her pudgy fingers spread like a starfish as she mimicked his stance. He’d pressed his palm to hers, and the feeling sent a spark of something new through her body. Joy, she would realize later, when he gave her the word for it. Peace.
“Now we are friends,” the Rhyllian boy said solemnly.
“You won’t growl at me any more, then?” she’d asked.
“I never did growl at you.”
“You did. Like a dog. But silent.”
“I smiled at you. Not growled.”
Sorrow shook her head. “You mustn’t smile here. It’s forbidden.”
As though she’d said something funny, the boy smiled again, then clapped his hand over his mouth, violet eyes wide.
Sorrow frowned, chewing her lip, as she came to a decision. “Show me,” she’d demanded.
And Rasmus had smiled for her on command.
The Jedenvat
Sorrow slipped out once he’d fallen asleep. In the dim light, he looked almost Rhannish. With his ears hidden by his hair, there was no sign of his Rhyllian heritage.
They’d first kissed a little over a year ago. One moment they’d been playing a Rhyllian card game Ras had smuggled to her rooms – she’d complained he was cheating, he’d tried to explain the overly complex rules – and then her mouth was on his, their lips the only parts of them touching in a frozen kiss.
They separated, and laughed, not quite meeting each other’s eyes, and continued with the game as though it hadn’t happened. And three nights later, Sorrow had found herself kissing him once more, but this time with confidence, curiosity, his hands on her shoulders, hers at his waist. It happened again the next night. Then again. And again, until sliding her arms around his neck and pulling him close when they were alone was almost a reflex. Things might have been different if Lincel hadn’t made it clear she didn’t need the aid of a fifteen-year-old boy who now spoke Rhannish better than he spoke Rhyllian. And if Irris hadn’t been occupied taking over from her brother on the Jedenvat, leaving Sorrow and Rasmus alone more and more.
They had no future – they’d known that all along. Laws had been passed centuries ago forbidding Rhyllian and Rhannish relationships, the price death in both countries. But it wasn’t enough to stop them. The fact it was forbidden made it sweeter, another secret, another rebellion, along with laughter, and games, and open windows.
As their relationship deepened, as kisses became much more, Sorrow wanted to know what happened when Adavere Starwhisperer crossed the bridge to Rhannon.
“He married her? The woman he built the bridge for? So Rhannish and Rhyllians could marry once?” Sorrow was shocked when her grandmother told her.
“Well, yes,” her grandmother said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Quite literally once. Before Adavere built the bridge there were no relations between our people and theirs. It was impossible because of the river. So Adavere and Namyra – the Rhannish woman – were the first. And also the last.”
“Why?”
“Adavere had a gift,” the dowager continued. “An ability. He claimed it must have come with the stars when he charmed them down. Because after that, his very presence would soothe and calm. Just to be near him would bring a feeling of bliss. But the gift was a double-edged blade, and while it eased away the bad, it also numbed the good. Adavere’s gift was especially strong, and it drove Namyra mad in the end. Every emotion she had was taken from her by him, leaving her a shell. She stopped sleeping in their rooms, stopped dining with him, even began hurting herself – anything to feel something. It broke her heart to withdraw from him, but it was the only way she could feel at all. Eventually she packed her things and fled in the night.
“She came back here, to Rhannon, and of course, Adavere came after her. It almost caused a war – in fact, some believe it was this that first created the bad blood between our countries – the abilities, and the power it might give them over us. Finally, after realizing the misery he’d left his bride in, Adavere returned to Rhylla, and passed a law saying relationships between his people and the Rhannish were forbidden, on pain of death. And the then-king of Rhannon made it law here too.”
All Sorrow knew of what the Rhyllians called their “abilities”, she’d learned from Rasmus. Neither Charon nor her grandmother had ever mentioned that the Rhyllian ambassador and his son could do things she couldn’t. He, of course, was able to soothe away pain – a skill she later took advantage of when her monthly courses harassed her. And his father was gifted with plants, able to coax them into growing faster than they might, in places they might not naturally, or to yield more fruit than they would normally.
But this gift of Adavere’s sounded different to what Rasmus had told her about his own ability. Dangerous, even. The law made sense to her, in light of that.
Just not sense enough for her to stop kissing Rasmus Corrigan when he lowered his mouth to hers.
Sorrow remembered the story of Adavere and Namyra as she climbed back into her own bed. She’d meant to talk to him after they’d finally sated themselves, to tell him that she was stepping up as chancellor presumpt, and that night had to be the last between them. That from tomorrow she could be his friend, but nothing more.
She tossed and turned for the rest of the night, too many thoughts in her mind to allow her rest. The tentative knocks of her maids at her door were a relief, when they finally came.
“Pardon, Miss Ventaxis, but it’ll be dawn in an hour. Your bath is ready.”
Sorrow shed the skin of her night-time self and became Miss Ventaxis, daughter of a drug addict and a dead woman, sister to a ghost that would not stop haunting her. And soon, the leader of the land.
Sorrow was bathed and dressed within half an hour, refusing breakfast, her stomach churning too much to contemplate food. Unable to settle to anything, she paced her room, marking the minutes in circuits, until word came from the Round Chamber at precisely seven bells, summoning her to them.