“What do you mean?” Sibba asked. The cold was finally creeping in beneath the warmth of her flush, and she wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The fur smelled like smoke from a hearth fire and made her think of the inside of the house, Estrid alone with Evenon. Though not truly alone. Not with a baby growing inside of her.
“To give myself to someone—body and soul—would mean sacrificing a part of my spirit, binding myself to them,” she said. Sibba turned quickly to look at her, surprised by this admission, and found her face too close to Tola's. The girl's green eyes, surrounded by black kohl, searched Sibba's face. Her thin, pink lips parted and warm breath brushed Sibba's cheek. “I draw my power from my spirit; if I give it away, I give away my powers.”
“When you find the right person, perhaps you'll be ready to make that sacrifice.” It was a whisper, a hope, a wish that Sibba spoke into the world.
Tola looked away, and Sibba let herself feel a bit happy about the pink flush that rose in the girl's cheeks. “My powers are too valuable. Without them, perhaps you would have wandered the draugnvithr for eternity. Perhaps the ax wound would have killed you. The gods have given me this gift for a reason, and I will use it for as long as I can.”
“But your mother? She must have found someone if she had you.”
“My mother had me because Chief Isgerd found someone suitable and ordered her to. She never learned how to love and I wonder if that’s what ruined her. I’m afraid…I’m afraid I’ll end up just like her. But I’m also afraid of losing that huge part of myself.”
Sibba felt Tola shrinking away from her, the gust of air that squeezed between them, and she could do nothing to stop it. Wasn't she the one who wanted to escape? The one who wanted to leave the Fields with no ties? Didn’t this make it easier? “Maybe it's for the best,” Sibba said, willing her voice not to tremble. “A life without love is a life without pain.”
Tola smacked her teeth and turned her eyes back to the sky. “Or perhaps a life without love is no life at all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Rayne
Rayne did her best to concentrate on the chessboard that was set up between her and her sister, but her mind wandered hopelessly. It had been like this since Imeyna, since Seloue, since the kiss, since Tierri had confessed how much he knew. Nothing seemed to matter except for the sprawling possibility that things could be different, and she could be the one to usher in that change. Not for her father or for the Knights, but for herself. For Tierri. For Seloue. For hundreds of slaves. It was a dazzling prospect that weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Edlyn captured Rayne's queen and peered up at her sister from beneath her long, dark lashes without a hint of her usual gloating. “Where are you today?”
The knife in its sheath pressed against her thigh. “I'm here.”
“You've been distant lately. I hope you’ll come back before the gathering.”
“I wouldn't miss it.”
Edlyn would be eighteen in a few days' time. That meant her betrothal would be made official, as would her position as Queen of Hail. It also meant that Rayne, who had not followed far behind Edlyn, would be eighteen in less than a year. It was the age of majority, when her sister would become the most powerful woman in the country. But she would squander that power, waste it on propagating their father’s legacy of slavery, destruction, and war.
Her right hand slipped into her pocket and gripped the knife's hilt, a reminder of why she was here and what she had to do. A clean slice across the neck with the blade that both Tierri and Rayne would claim had last been seen in Danyll's possession. A fresh smear of her blood on the Crowheart door, a scream that would draw the guards. She would fall to her knees and weep at her sister's side, just an innocent, tragic princess.
Just inside the closed door, Danyll and Tierri spoke in a low rumble of deep, quiet voices. Tierri's back was to her; Danyll had not let Edlyn out of his sight since the assassination attempt, and his narrow eyes regularly swept over Rayne as if searching for any sign of treachery. He had not accused her of the poisoning, but he also no longer let his guard down around her. But he had missed the knife in her pocket and the determined line into which her mouth was set.
She countered Edlyn but it was a sloppy move and Edlyn knew it. She moved her bishop diagonally across the board. “Check.”
“I could use some sleep,” Danyll was saying. Tierri shifted his weight and looked over his shoulder at the girls. Rayne tried to ignore him, tried not to see, but she had been hyper-aware of him. Just the sound of his voice or a glimpse of him through a doorway set her heart to racing. When they had walked up the stairs to Edlyn's room that morning, it felt like the sparks between them should have been visible. But he had given her no indication that he had even given their kiss another thought.
Tell me to stop. A part of her wished that she had, but a bigger part of her wished that he had not left that night.
Rayne moved her knight to protect her king, and Edlyn dispatched him quickly. “Check,” the girl said again.
“How did you get so good at this?” Rayne asked.
“Practice,” Edlyn confessed. “Years and years of practice.” Years and years of solitude, of time spent across the board from Prince Danyll, being brainwashed into thinking she needed him just because he was the only one there.
“I'm sorry,” Rayne said, dropping her voice but not taking her eyes off of her pieces. She saw no way out of this one; anywhere she went, she would lose. “For leaving you alone.”
Edlyn scoffed. “It wasn't your fault. You were taken from us. I'm sorry I didn't…that we didn't…”
Rayne looked up at her then but Edlyn’s eyes were somewhere else, years in the past, on a scene that haunted Rayne every night. How had she never thought about the fact that Madlin had to haunt her siblings just as much? Her hand moved almost of its own accord, knocking down her own king as she reached across the board and grabbed Edlyn's fingers.
“Me, too,” Rayne admitted.
“I think about her a lot.”
“Every day.”
“Maddy didn't deserve it. Mother blamed Father, you know? We all thought the Knights had taken you in revenge. We kept waiting for your body to appear on the pikes, but it never did, and maybe that was worse. The not knowing. The blame—”
Edlyn stopped abruptly when a hand landed on her back. Rayne looked up into Danyll's black eyes and did her best not to recoil. As much as she looked like a crow, he looked like a snake. “I'm going,” he said. “Tierri is here. I trust him.” He looked pointedly at Rayne, but she made sure not to look away. He would get no sign of guilt from her. When he left, Tierri slipped out behind him without a backward glance to stand guard at the door. It was her turn now.
“The blame is Father's,” Rayne said, standing and pacing, the game forgotten.
Edlyn watched her. “The blame belongs to us all.”