She heard the truth in his words. He believed everything he was saying, and she had no reason to doubt it. In fact, a number of things now made more sense. Naelin had always considered herself a practical person. She wanted one thing: for Erian and Llor to be safe. If the dying queen did not have an heir, then Naelin’s children were in danger. And if there truly was no one else . . . “I’ll do it.”
A voice from the bed: “Mommy, no!”
Erian.
She left Ven and went to them. Llor was fast asleep, curled around his pillow, but Erian’s eyes were wide. Naelin wrapped her arms around her daughter and held her close.
“Please don’t do it, Mommy,” Erian whispered in her ear. Her breath tickled. Naelin inhaled, breathing in the scent of lilac soap, dried sweat, and little girl. Erian still fit in her arms, though her legs spilled out beyond Naelin’s lap.
“I promise I will be as careful as I possibly can be. Even more careful than Llor when he climbed his first tree. Do you remember that?” She tilted her daughter’s chin so Erian would see that Naelin was smiling and unafraid—or at least faking it as hard as she could.
A tiny tentative smile touched Erian’s lips. “You made him wear two safety ropes, in case one broke, and wrapped him in so much padding that he looked like a sausage.”
“And the helmet? Remember that?”
“It was a pot! You padded it with towels.”
“And when he fell?”
Her smile wavered. “You caught him.”
Naelin stroked her hair. “The queen needs me to catch Aratay. And I have to be ready to do it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mama.”
She’s lying, Naelin thought. But then again, so am I.
The funerals started at dawn, when the pale yellow light filtered in patches through the leaves and the birds chirped so perkily that Daleina wished she could ask her archers to shoot them all. It felt wrong that the birds were chirping, wrong that the sun was shining, wrong that the sky was blue and the wind was mild, wrong that the spirits around the palace were flittering through the roses and playing in the fountains as if they hadn’t just tasted the blood of Daleina’s people . . . Calm, she told herself. Serene. She kept her pace even as she processed from the palace to the burial grove, flanked by both guards and courtiers. Captain Alet was on her left, and Champion Ven marched on her right. People lined the bridges and paths, silently watching the queen pass by.
She’d buried too many people in the last year. First her friends, and now . . . These were people she was supposed to protect! People who trusted her, who relied on her, who . . . It’s not my fault. But it is someone’s fault. Someone, perhaps someone in this crowd, had poisoned her. That someone was responsible for these deaths.
He or she was what her archers should shoot. Not the birds.
Bells were ringing, sweetly, a hopeful sound. She was supposed to speak about hope and life within sorrow. She’d prepared a speech as she’d mechanically swallowed her breakfast—Hamon had stood beside her, making sure she ate every bite. She didn’t taste any of it.
He was somewhere in the crowd, nearby. Her eyes fell on him, and she tried to draw strength from the calm, peaceful, measured way he walked. Looking back at her, his eyes were full of compassion.
Ahead, the grove was wreathed in flowers. The families of the fallen . . . Fallen, she thought. As if they’d merely collapsed. As if they hadn’t been violently torn apart. Ripped from life. She felt their eyes on her, and she felt the accusation behind their gaze.
Beside her, a courtier drew a bell from the pocket of his robes. He rang it. Another, a caretaker, rang his bell. And another, hers. The families kept their hands clasped, in silence beside the fresh graves, as throughout the grove, bells rang together, their high tones melding into one shrill sob.
Stepping forward, Queen Daleina raised her hands, and the bells silenced. Hope. Sorrow. She knew what she was supposed to say.
She chose not to say it.
“You hate me right now,” Daleina said, raising her voice to carry across the grove. Her words fell into the silence like raindrops on a still pond. “You blame me. I am alive, and your loved ones are not. You see me standing here, dressed in silks and jewels, and you think, ‘If the queen is not dead, my father, mother, brother, sister, child, friend shouldn’t be either.’” She’d been lucky—her sister was still alive—but so many weren’t.
Listening, everyone was silent. Not everyone, she corrected. Flying through the leaves above, the birds cried and sang. Squirrels scurried through the branches. The spirits burrowed through the earth and slipped through the air.
She did not look at her champions or her courtiers or her caretakers. Not even at Alet or Ven or Hamon. She looked instead into the eyes of the families of the dead. “I want to say I am sorry. I am sorry that I’m standing here, not your loved ones. I’m sorry I couldn’t save them. I’m sorry for the emptiness you feel.” She smoothed the paper she had in her hand, the notes for her speech, and then crumpled it, and then smoothed it again as she spoke. “I could tell you that time will heal you, but I think that’s a cruel thing to say, because right now you don’t want time to heal you. You don’t want to forget. Because forgetting means that they’re really gone.” She thought of her friends—Linna’s smile, Mari’s voice, Revi’s laugh. She thought of Master Bei and of her childhood friends, the ones who died in Greytree. “I don’t want you to ever forget them. But I do want you to forget this, the pain you feel today that feels as if it’s eating your skin and consuming your soul. I want you instead to remember the joy these people brought to your lives. I want you to remember the moments they made you smile, or cry, the moments they made you feel alive. I want you to honor the ways they shaped who you are and who you will become. For they are a part of you, now and forever. And I know that it’s not the same. I know that it’s not enough. I also know that I cannot truly understand your pain, because your pain is not my pain. It is yours, uniquely yours, and it is all right to feel it fully and deeply for today and for as many days as you need to feel it, until you can feel joy again.”
The birds kept singing. The squirrels kept scurrying.
But the spirits were listening.
And so were her people.
“Feel the pain. Feel the anger. Feel the sorrow. Feel the loss. And then when you have felt all of it, forgive them for leaving you. Forgive yourself for still being here.” Forgive me, she wanted to say. “Forgive life for being fragile and brief. Forgive time for passing. Forgive . . .” She faltered as her eyes locked onto a child’s eyes. He was tiny, maybe four or five years old, and enveloped in too-big clothes that must have been borrowed for the funeral. He was clutching the right hand of a man in caretaker garb. His hand was swallowed in the man’s hand, and he was staring at Queen Daleina with red, puffy, angry eyes.
Abruptly, Daleina said, “You deserve to know why.”