The sun was setting and fires were started, the travelers eager for warm baths and hot food. Fruit was plucked from the engorged trees and sliced and folded into dough prepared by the cook with flour and oil from Dendar Bay. There was no fresh meat, but there would be pies. The torches—still waiting in sconces on every wall of the castle—were lit, enlivening the spirits of the group. It wasn’t until hours later, after appetites were sated and tubs were filled, emptied, and filled again, washing the miles from the bodies of almost four dozen travelers, that Sasha emerged from the room where the women had bathed, her hair still damp, her dress rumpled but clean. After his own bath, Kjell had waited outside her door, unwilling to let down his guard, even under the lulling glow of heat and warmth, of tired voices and rock walls. The other women had come and gone, hardly noticing him they were so accustomed to his watchful presence.
“Come with me,” Sasha murmured, extending her hand to him. “There is something I must show you.” The night was deepening and everyone but the assigned watch had retired to their pallets in the Great Hall to find sleep and a bit of solitude behind closed lids. Kjell took a torch from the foyer and followed Sasha up the shadowy staircase, keeping her hand in his and his eyes peeled to the darkness of the upper floor. No one had bothered to light the upstairs.
They walked down the corridors, lighting sconces as they did, chasing the darkness and the gloom as they passed elaborate tapestries and enormous portraits. A painting, rimmed in gold and adorned in cobwebs caught his eye. Sasha, her eyes wide and dark and her brilliant hair dulled by dust, had been captured against a backdrop of green. Kjell slowed, wanting to stare, but Sasha urged him forward, unimpressed by the beauty of her portrait.
She didn’t look twice at the row of blond kings, but continued on until she stood beneath a picture of a royal family wearing crowns of gold branches and gilded leaves, gazing out of the painting in contented unity.
“Is that . . . Padrig?” Kjell asked, pointing to the bearded, blond man beside the king. The painting was dated four decades earlier, but Padrig hadn’t changed very much. He looked old even then.
“Yes. He is Aren’s uncle. Padrig was King Gideon’s younger brother. That is Briona, Gideon’s queen and Aren’s mother.” Sasha indicated the couple seated in the center of the portrait.
King Gideon and Queen Briona were stately, attractive people, painted with steady gazes and elevated chins.
“That is Aren,” Sasha pointed at the tall youth in the painting. He looked about fifteen or sixteen summers, his hair golden, his eyes blue, his features sharp, and he stood next to a girl maybe two or three summers older. The girl was also fair with pale blue eyes and a solemn expression. There was something defiant and almost familiar about the set of her jaw and her unsmiling mouth. Sasha pointed at her. “That is Aren’s older sister.”
“Why are you showing me this painting, Sasha?” Kjell asked, trying to be patient and failing, as usual.
“Because . . . her name was Koorah,” Sasha said softly.
Kjell froze, arrested by the painted face of the girl with the same name as his mother. Sasha reached for his hand again, anchoring him, but she continued, her voice adopting the sing-song quality she used whenever she told stories.
“No one talked about Koorah when I came to Caarn. She had been gone a long time.” Sasha took a deep breath, steadying herself, and he glanced down at her, noting the flush on her cheeks and the trembling of her lips. She was as stricken as he. “She would have been queen, Kjell. In Caarn, the throne passes to the oldest child, not the oldest son. She never married, but Aren says she was well-loved. There were suitors, of course, but no one turned her head or won her heart. When she was twenty-eight summers, she disappeared. Aren believed she’d fallen in love with someone unfit to be king. She boarded a ship in the Bay of Dendar, and no one ever saw her again. King Gideon and Queen Briona convinced themselves she was lost at sea. It was easier to believe her dead than to worry about her wellbeing. And everyone knew there were terrible creatures in the Jeruvian Sea,” Sasha added on a whisper.
“Koorah was my mother’s name,” Kjell murmured, his throat too constricted for greater sound.
“I know,” she answered, her voice as hushed as his. “You told me once. But I didn’t even remember my own name then. Today, when you told the trees to move and they obeyed, Padrig asked you where your mother was from.”
“And you remembered her name,” he supposed.
“Yes.” She nodded. For a moment they were quiet, contemplative. Kjell’s mind pulsed with possibilities he discarded almost as quickly as they came. But Sasha wasn’t finished.
“I remembered your mother’s name, and I remembered the story of Koorah, the Healer, who would have been queen,” she said.
“The Healer?”
“Yes, Captain, a Healer.” Sasha lifted her eyes to his, and he could only gaze back, suddenly seeing another slave woman in a foreign land. He’d never known what his mother looked like. He still didn’t, but he gave her blue eyes and golden hair like the portrait on the wall. He gave her a stubborn jaw and a mouth that looked like his.
“Koorah is not a common name,” Sasha murmured.
“No,” he agreed.
“The trees obeyed you,” Sasha reminded.
“Yes.” There was no denying it.
“She was a Healer. You are a Healer.”
He nodded again.
“If you are Lady Koorah of Caarn’s son, then . . . you are the King of Caarn.”
He began shaking his head, adamant and disbelieving. This is where they would not agree. “It could never be proven. And I don’t have any desire to be king.”
“Kell means prince in Dendar,” Sasha whispered.
“I was named after the Kjell Owl! The midwife named me,” Kjell argued.
“Is it possible . . . Koorah . . . named you?” Sasha asked.
“I know only what I was told,” he whispered, and turned away from the painting. “It makes no sense. My father—Zoltev—would have married her if she was heir to a throne. It would have been an advantageous match.”
“Maybe she never told him . . . maybe, like you, she had no desire to be queen, and maybe Zoltev was not the man she followed to Jeru.”
“Or maybe she simply loved . . . badly, and realized too late,” he acquiesced, and his eyes found Sasha’s. “We will never know.”
“No. Not for certain. But I had to show you. It would have been wrong to keep it from you.”
“Keep what from me? Her name was Koorah. It means nothing to me! She means nothing to me. There is no one here, Sasha. We are surrounded by trees and little else.” He ground his palms into his eyes. He was tired, overwrought, and the words that he uttered next were not words he was proud of. “Come back to Jeru. Come back with me, Sasha. Please.”
She bowed her head, and he felt her agony even as he cursed his own weakness. He clenched his fists and looked for something to break.
“I cannot turn my back on these people,” she said.